f^^T 





Class _Zr^jS2 

Book_ 






GopjoightN^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 



AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



The autumns of Iowa are somewhat peculiar in their 
beauty and serenity. The oppressive summer heat is 
over by the last of August, and from that time until the 
middle of November, the mellow softness of the climate, 
the beauty and grandeur of the foliage, the dry and 
natural roads that cross our prairies, the balmy fragrance 
of the atmosphere, the serene sky, all combined, present 
to the eye of the traveller a picture calculated to excite 
emotions of wonder and delight. 

— Newitall: Sketches of Iowa, 1841 



BOOKS BY SELDEN L. WHITCOMB 

PKOSE 

Chronological Outlines of American Literature. 
The Macmillan Company. 

The Study of a Novel. Heath and Company. 

VERSE 

Lyrical Verse. Grinnell Herald Press. 

Random Rhymes and The Three Queens. Grin- 
nell Herald Press. 

Poems. Richard Badger. 





o 




i^- 




O 

•i a 



^ 5 



AUTUMN NOTES 
IN IOWA 



By 

SELDEN LINCOLN WHITCOMB 

Associate Professor of English Literature, the University of Kansas 
Sometime Instructor in Civics, Iowa State Teachers' College; for ten 

years Professor of English Literature, Grinnell College 

Author of Papers on "Nature in Early American Literature," "The 

Poetry of Islands," *'A Chronicle of Campus Nests," 

"A Duddon River Journal," etc. 




THE TORCH PRESS 
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA 

1914 



Published October, 1914. Five hundred copies 

■ W6'S 



Copyright 1914 by S. L. Whitcomb 
All rights reserved 



THE TORCH PRESS 
CEDAR RAPIDS 



m 161914 



'CI,A388391 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
HAL HOWARD AND EMMET BURLEW 

BOYHOOD COMRADES OF MINE 
BY HAWKEYE FIELD AND WOODLAND 



PREFACE 

The following' pages consist mainly of ^'nature 
notes," with such incidental attention to human 
affairs as seemed appropriate for this type of 
writing. 

A reasonably extensive literature, aside from 
purely scientific work, has been produced in this 
field by Iowa writers. From L — 's Journal of 
Marches, written in 1834-35, to the recent excel- 
lent essays of Mr. Lazell, one may find many re- 
corded observations of outdoor life in Hawkeye- 
land. Among works of notable value with which 
the writer happens to be acquainted, the article 
on The Old Prairie Slough, by the late beloved 
Charles Aldrich, seems very suggestive and a 
worthy model for other essayists; while Hamlin 
Garland's Boy Life on the Prairie should be con- 
sidered a classic in every patriotic Iowa home. 
William Savage, with a certain propriet}^, has been 
called ''The Iowa Thoreau," Unfortunately his 
extensive diaries are as yet accessible only in 
manuscript form. For permission to examine 
them and to include a few selections in this vol- 
ume, the author is indebted to Hon. Edgar R. 

(11) 



12 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Harlan, Curator of the State Historical Depart- 
ment of Iowa. 

Of those interested in the Iowa literature of 
this type, some now live or have once lived in the 
state ; others know nature in Iowa only by report. 
One reader may be stirred by the simplest men- 
tion of a flower or bird loved in childhood, or fa- 
miliar now in everyday life ; another may be alert 
to discover the relations of Iowa flora, fauna, and 
weather, from the point of view of personal obser- 
vation, to those of Rhode Island, Georgia, or Cali- 
fornia. Some passages in our text suggest these 
interstate comparisons. 

For all ^^ nature fakirs" there exists the inex- 
haustible pleasure of comparison of data for dif- 
ferent individual observers, for different locali- 
ties, seasons, years, and generations. The new 
finding and the lost treasure both give a certain 
satisfaction. The cardinal now seems more fre- 
quent than of old in central Iowa, but in the Jas- 
per County woods, can you any longer find the yel- 
low lady's slipper, as in golden Junes of youth? 
Can you today listen to the April drumming of the 
grouse, or watch his long flight from snow-covered 
shrubbery in December? 

All the data given in this volume as observa- 
tions made at a specific time and place are bona 
fide personal records for that time and place. 
These are not strictly journal entries, however. 



PREFACE 13 

Some of the reflections and generalizations have 
been added to the original notes in later years, and 
the style of both earlier and later records has 
been freely revised. 

The writer is grateful to all those who have 
furnished photographs for the illustrations. The 
photograph by Mr. Carl Stempel has been accessi- 
ble through the kindness of Miss Selma Stempel. 
Miss Katharine Macy and Professor Charles Noble 
have read the manuscript and their interest and 
suggestive comment have been appreciated. Miss 
Edna Osborne has given valuable assistance in 
revision of the manuscript, and in preparation of 
the index. 

If it were possible to thank all of the comrades 
of our Hawkeye rambles, early and late — college 
president, lawyer, doctor of medicine and doctor 
of philosophy, banker, Rhodes scholar, Indian lad, 
farm boy, bright Dutch woman from South Afri- 
ca ! Some are still living in Iowa, some are be- 
yond the Atlantic or the Pacific ; some have passed 
across a yet wider sea. Surely some of us who 
love the comradeship with nature find still deeper 
in our hearts the fellowship of man. 

S. L. W. 
Marine Station, San Juan Island, 
Washington, July, 1914 



CONTENTS 






SEPTEMBER 




Pilot Rock, Cherokee County, 1887 


21 


Cedar Falls, 1891 


25 


Sabula to Sioux City, 1893 


28 


Grinnell, 1901 


34 


Charles City to Marshalltowx, 1906 


36 


Des Moines, 1906 .... 


39 


Mason City, 1907 .... 


42 


Grinnell, 1907 


47 


Grinnell to Des Moines, Des Moines, 1^ 


)07 . 52 


Clear Lake to McGregor, McGregor, 190^ 


5 . 55 


Dubuque, 1908 


63 


Muscatine, 1909 


69 


OCTOBER 




Grinnell, 1884 


75 


Davenport, 1885 . 






80 


Grinnell, 1886 . 






82 


Cedar Falls, 1891 






86 


Sioux City, 1893 






88 


Grinnell, 1901 . 






93 


Albia to New Sharon, 1906 






97 


Des Moines, 1906 






100 


Grinnell, 1906 . 






104 


Lawrence, Kansas, 1906 . 






108 


Lawrence, Kansas, 1913 . 






112 



16 



AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



NOVEMBER 








Grinnell, 1885 . 117 


Cedar Falls, 1891 . 






, 


121 


Grinnell, 1898 . 








123 


Iowa City, 1900 . 








131 


Grinnell, 1901 . 








134 


Lawrence, Kansas, 1907 . 








138 


Des Moines, 1912 








143 


Grinnell, 1912 . 








151 


Lawrence, Kansas, 1913 . 








154 


APPENDIX 


I. Notes for September .... 159 


II. Notes for October . 








167 


III. Notes for November . 








176 


IV. Historicmj Data 








180 


V. List of References . 








182 


Index 








185 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Country Ro.vd near Newburg . 

Indian Tepee near Tama . 

A Back-yard at Grinnell 

The Mississippi near Fort M.u)ison 

Osage Orange Hedge . 

A Cave Dweller on the Missouri 

Skunk River at Lynnville 

Blmr Hall on Grinnell Campus 





Frontispiece ^^ 


29 t^ 




49 »^ 




68 ^ 




78^ 




89*^ 




129*^ 




. . 147^ 



SEPTEMBER 



SEPTEMBER 

Now blooms the feath'ry goldenrod, 

The flower of Iowa's choice; 
The katydid and cricket, too, 

Have lifted up their voice. 
The works of Nature, careless-like. 

Are strewn in woods and field, 
Spread out in a September sun, 

With every book unsealed. 

(Tacitus Hussey, in The River Bend) 



(19) 



SEPTEMBER 

''Pilot Rock,'' Cherokee County, 

September 22, 1887. 
Last Sunday evening several of our gang and 
almost the entire family of our miller host walked 
to meeting. The service was held by the Wesley an 
Methodists, in their very simple frame building, 
two or three miles down the road. One wonders 
if many of the picturesque phases of the country 
church in Iowa have been recorded by pen or 
brush. Within the state many a humble spire 
rises into the sunlight from an exposed knoll of 
prairie, or gleams through a sheltering grove of 
oaks or maples. ' ' The Little Brown Church in the 
Vale" has attained more than local fame, but 
probably there are many others no less worthy 
still waiting for the imaginative insight of poet 
or painter. How many architectural details of 
external or interior plan, how many types of me- 
morial for the dead, must have been brought over- 
seas from Wales, Holland, Germany, Norway, to 
this land of new hope. The social life that centers 
in sucli churches miglit also furnish rich materials 

i-n) 



22 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

for sketch or story, crude as that life may be in 
some aspects. On the night of our visit, a sombre 
pleading from the pulpit was reinforced by abun- 
dant shouts, groans and wailings from restless 
men and women in the congregation. Timid young 
country girls and roguish farm lads added other 
tones of local color. All in all, it was a relief to 
leave the gloomy little room, dimly lighted by 
kerosene lamps, the people feverishly concerned 
with matters of medieval theology, and to pass in- 
to the wide calm of the autumnal night, under the 
brilliance of the abiding stars. 

Yesterday, rain, rain, rain. After a morning's 
work along the line and an afternoon of indoor 
wrestling with '^estimates,'' we fell asleep with 
the rain still pattering on the roof above the low 
farmhouse chamber. It has been a month of some- 
what heavy rainfall. Ten days ago, after a night 
of steady pouring, we tramped about fifteen miles, 
to and from our work, along muddy roads and 
across soggy fields. How the transit tripod can 
bruise one's shoulder on the last homeward mile 
after a hard day ! That night we came dragging 
into the yard pretty well fagged, but we had 
helped to establish a new Iowa town. Where a 
few weeks before stretched only the wide farm 
fields, there are now at least plotted streets and 
lots, the staked line of a side-switch, and an ele- 
vator and blacksmith shop actually built. Quim- 



SEPTEMBER 23 

hy is born and named, for better or for worse ca- 
reer than other llawkeye towns. 

The great storm of the month, not Ukely to have 
any local rival this season, came on the fourth. 
Late in the afternoon, after a quiet day, the mnd 
rose to hurricane efficiency, and the rains fell 
heavily, dashing, slashing, crashing. The tents of 
^Kieffe 's camp were all blown down, and his men 
toiled like heroes to prepare supper, and search 
for drier regions in which to sleep. The Little 
Sioux, that had been like a meadow stream with 
low water, rose rapidly, and all night raged furi- 
ously by the bridge, mill, and farmhouse. The 
next morning the air was clear and calm, in almost 
ironical contrast wdth the effects of the storm. 
There were stretches along the roads w^liere the 
water stood nearly knee deep, and for rods and 
rods along the dumps it was impossible for man 
or team to do any work. The river, flooded to the 
top of its banks, rushed roaring over the old log- 
dam, pitching into the swirling foam below, broken 
timbers, tangled masses of vegetable wreckage, 
battered rowboats, and carcasses of farm animals. 

In the hot August days we had many a refresh- 
ing plunge in the river. A week or so ago when 
w^e w^ere putting in false work for the bridge and 
had to stand or wade, waist deep, in the stream for 
hours, the water w^as far too chilly for comfort. 
Todav is verv cold. There are manv signs of the 



24 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

waning of summer. Already there have been a 
few sunsets with glorious autumnal coloring. The 
local watermelon season is about over. For three 
weeks there has been an abundant supply, and the 
men of both surveying and contractor's gangs 
have been liberal buyers from the farm boy who 
watched over a hoard of the fruit in front of the 
farmyard fence. Wild plums and wild grapes 
have been quite abundant in the copses along the 
river, but now only a few remain on the trees and 
vines. It was early in September, a few years 
ago, when the wheat was being threshed and the 
goldenrod was blooming all over the Dakota prai- 
ries, that we made our excursion to the banks of 
the Jim, bringing back a great basketful of wild 
plums. From the vines along the Jim or Turtle 
Creek, we brought back abundance of mid grapes,^ 
and from both fruits the women folks made de- 
licious jellies and preserves to sweeten the long- 
territorial winter. 

Along the sandy dumps of our roadbed one can 
now often see hundreds of bright-tinted, swift- 
footed tiger beetles, flashing in the sunlight. They 
seem characteristic of the season. The birds in 
general have become inconspicuous, not only in 
song but in presence. One afternoon not long ago 
we watched the flight of a large flock of cranes — 



1 For a description of a similar excursion in Iowa about 1845, 
see Caroline A. Soule's Pet of tJie Seitlcmeni, Chapter IX. 



SEPTEMBER 25 

silent, but with a shifting group formation inter- 
esting to follow. Occasionally a kingfisher still 
rattles along the river, or one gets a glimpse of a 
disconsolate flicker, flying from cornfleld to road, 
with the manners of a culprit. A solitary flicker, 
with or without the piercing cry, is a common 
enough figure in the early autumn days, but some- 
times members of the species gather in flocks at 
this time of the year. A few years ago, in Sep- 
tember or possibly in August, near the center of 
the state, I saw a flock of a hundred or more feed- 
ing in a level, damp, roadside meadow^, making a 
memorable picture, and one w4th little or no sug- 
gestion of autumnal melancholy. 

Cedar Falls, September 26, 1891. 
By the middle of the month the lessening hours 
of daylight gave a conspicuous promise of autumn ; 
earlier and earlier rose the twdlight chorus of the 
crickets. Practically all the field crops of this 
richly productive region, in a bountiful year, had 
been gathered, except the corn and the pumpkins 
along the corn rows. On the thirteenth a church 
held its annual harvest service, the pulpit, choir, 
and walls being decorated with ripe fruits and 
grains brought in by the farmers of the congrega- 
tion. That afternoon the birds came eagerly to the 
bathing dish on our lawn, to a service after their 
own manner. The English sparrows dashed down 



26 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

with heavy, noisy flight, with bold chattering very 
different from the traditional British reserve. The 
bluebirds approached in family flock to dip and 
flutter in the shallow water, delighted certainly and 
apparently grateful. A social sparrow — no stran- 
ger to our lawn in days of the nesting period — 
ventured a very close approach to the observer. 
Near at hand, what a tiny creature he seemed, and 
of what sane and practical character. There was 
surely slight trace of sentiment in the expression 
of his eyes, in his pantomime, or in that energetic 
sally after a providential moth. A goldfinch or 
two, already in sedate fall plumage, cheeped busily 
about. A flicker, of heroic size in comparison with 
his comrades, closed undulatory flight at the ren- 
dezvous, balanced himself for a moment on the rim 
of the dish, took one drink, and departed without 
uttering a syllable. He has his long flexible tongue 
well under control — on occasion. While the 
smaller birds lingered at their bath, suddenly from 
a little distance came the harsh cries of a blue jay, 
and all the merry company flashed to sheltering 
trees across the street. 

September in this prairie country is a month of 
variable character as to temperature. Last year, 
in Olmsted County, Minnesota, the month was un- 
usually cold. On the seventh a fire was needed 
for comfort, indoors ; on the twelfth we wore over- 
coats even at active work along the line; on the 



SEPTEMBER 27 

eighth the white frost glistened along the bridge 
timbers and other heavy frosts soon followed. By 
tlie end of the month the meadowlarks sang by 
clumps of faded goldenrod, near the borders of 
woods already rich in autumn tints. The pano- 
rama of the w^oodlands along the Mississippi 
bluffs, from Winona to St. Paul, seemed at its best 
in the very first days of October. The past two 
weeks here have brought us the most severe heated 
period of the 3"ear, the temperature rising into the 
nineties. The cliirping of the crickets has a mid- 
summery effect, and for a week or more the loud 
rasping calls of the katydids have been prominent 
every evening. The earth is dry. After a slight 
shower a few days ago the English sparrows and 
the bluebirds, ignoring the bath-dish on the lawm, 
dipped and dashed in the eaves-trough, a few feet 
from the chamber window. This morning a robin 
warbled his rain-song in vain.- ''All signs fail in 
dry weather.'^ But the geese are moving south. 
A friend reports a flock seen some two w^eeks ago 
— early birds, surely, for this particular season. 
Today from the heat and dust of the tennis court, 
we looked up to w^atch a considerable flock, and 
took comfort in the thought of the ''crisp" Octo- 
ber davs that surely follow. 



2 See Appendix, Note 1. 



28 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Sabiila to Sioux City, circa September 25, 1893. 

After many months in the unceasing tnmult of 
New York City, after a hurried visit, amid restless 
crowds, to the Cohimbian Exposition in Chicago, 
it was good to spend a quiet, beautiful September 
day crossing the old home state. The route 
touched no large town, but justified the familiar 
phrase ''an agricultural state" by offering a con- 
tinuous succession of pastures, orchards, and tilled 
fields, varied only by woods and villages. Perhaps 
the first morning sensations of freshness, calm, 
and above all, of wide expanse, dawned on a 
drowsy intelligence somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood of Marion. "We were rolling then along the 
crest of a height of land, with miles and miles of 
fertile valley on both sides, bound on the dim hor- 
izon by low, blurred masses of woodland — ''tim- 
ber" or grove. 

A few hours later we whirled through the "Res- 
ervation." The old word "savages," so common- 
ly used in early records of Western life, might 
perhaps apply in a degree to the speeding, shout- 
ing Indians we had watched a night or two before, 
under electric lights, in the great tent of Buffalo 
Bill's Wild West ShoAv. Along these low river 
lands this calm morning, the dignified indi^dduals 
or stolid little groups of red men gave a very dif- 
ferent impression. To the writer, a glimpse of the 
Tama village readily excites vivid memories of 




From a }>h(>to[iraph by Cornelia Clarke 

Indian Tepee near Tama 



SEPTEMBER 31 

the Musqnakios as tliey appeared in his boyhood, 
nomadic visitors to the towns and streams of Pow- 
eshiek Connty. Down the main street often passed 
a strag-g'Ung procession of the toug-h little ponies, 
the grim looking- braves, and the weazeny squaws, 
some of them with pai)pooses strapped to their 
backs. Often into the very penetralia of the pale- 
face's dwelling glided the gaily-clad Indian women, 
in moccasined feet, requesting, rejecting, commu- 
nicating mainly by gesture and by deep grunts of 
approval or annoyance. Once our neighbor's 
great Newfoundland, ^^ Bruno," routed a little 
band of begging squaws at his master's gate, and 
their alarmed, scrambling retreat dow^n the old 
board sidewalk of ''Wyant's Row" made quite a 
comic scene. One spring there was a temporary 
encampment in the Sugar Creek w^oods — a tepee, 
a tent, a silent adult or two and a cheery looking 
little boy of seven or eight years, when I saw it. 
The boy, with the sharp eyes of his race, watched 
me gathering spring flowers, and soon came smil- 
ing to my side, and helped me collect spring beauty 
and bloodroot for my botany can. 

Today everywhere the great cornfields stretch 
away in mild golden glory, for the most part still 
in tall row^s of military precision, though some 
fields are in shock. ^^Corn!" How we boys once 
wondered at the strange meaning given the famil- 
iar word in the Bible ; how we strove to learn the 



32 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

exact significance and the flavor of that other 
word '^ maize,'' which to this day probably seems 
a trifle snobbish to some of us. It may be a mat- 
ter of vexation to Hawkeyes, also, that one of the 
best essays so far written on the great grain — 
Miss Edith Thomas's Mondamin — hails from so 
far east as Ohio. But the corn-belt is spacious. 
The King nods across southern fields to King Cot- 
ton, and far northward offers chivalrous greeting 
to the brown-haired flax. His domain proper 
ranges westward to the lands of the prairie dogs, 
and his colonies, weak or strong, make a chain 
across the continent. On September sixteenth, 
some forty years ago, Miss Cooper wrote, in south- 
ern New York, ' ' The maize-stalks are drying and 
withering as the ears ripen. . . All through the 
summer months, the maize-fields are beautiful with 
their long, glossy leaves ; but when ripe, dry, and 
colorless, they will not compare with the waving 
lawns of other grains. The golden ears, however, 
after the husk has been taken off, are perhaps the 
noblest heads of grain in the world ; the rich piles 
now lying about the fields are a sight to rejoice the 
farmer's heart." She adds two paragraphs on 
the history of the pumpkin, and on its relations to 
corn — ''When they are harvested and gathered 
in heaps, the pumpkins rival the yellow corn in 
richness; and a farm-wagon carrying a load of 
husked corn and pumpkins, bears as handsome a 



SEPTEMBKK 33 

load of produce as the country yields." But 
who lias yet written the complete poem of the corn, 
with all its episodes — the field stripped by hail; 
the contented cattle g-leaning- ; the crow perched at 
summit of stalk; the wind-bent shock robed by 
snow ? 

Some fields are already black from the fall 
I)loughing-; in others the ploughman halted a 
weary team, waving a crumpled hat and watching 
us till w^e passed from sight, or bent steadily above 
the furrow, disdaining to notice the indolent trav- 
elers. These figures of man and team against the 
broad, open landscape soo'n vanished, and we were 
racing through some little village where half the 
inhabitants seemed '^dowm to the depot," to w^atch 
the limited pass, and where the browai pouch flung 
from our mail-car leaped along the platform like 
a tumble-weed across wdndy, fenceless prairies. 

Across the state — by slough, creek and river ; 
by meadow^ and pasture, hedgerow^, garden, grove, 
and orchard ; stubble-field, rich black loam ; weeds, 
flowers; by red men, wdiite men, black men; by 
country school and village church. Never for 
many miles at a time is the land really level even 
to the traveler's eyes; always soon appear the 
long slopes, the low, rounded hills, or the steep 
banks along a stream. Turning to the human in- 
terest, wdiat suggestion of local history lies in such 
])lirases as ''Coon Rapids" and "Sioux City," 



34 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

what fancies of life beyond the seas are roused 
b}' such names as Gladstone, Cambridge, Huxley, 
Melbourne, Madrid, Manilla. Night fell on us 
amid the broken, unfilled borderlands of the Big- 
Sioux and the Big Muddy — ^ in a region of scarred 
bluffs and deep ravines, where the evening shad- 
ows were heavy under the hills and the sunlight 
lingered on long, high trestles across semi-moun- 
tainous streams. So we sped, curving and curv- 
ing, climbing and descending, into the darkness, 
tow^ard the land of the Dakotas. 

Grinnell, September 26, 1901. 
About nine o'clock this evening, Curtis and I 
strolled across the open moonlit fields to a famil- 
iar willow hedge, remote from roads and houses, 
where we built a low fire of cornhusks and willow 
twigs, and roasted field corn and wild crab apples. 
We picked the crab apples from a little clump of 
scraggy trees reminding one of the stunted trees, 
with crowded branches twisted into fantastic 
curves, along some windy, sandy reach of lower 
Cape Cod. The ' ^ puckery, ' ' oily but acid flavor of 
the fruit, uncooked, provides some sensation of the 
wild and primitive. Our roasting process also was 
rather primitive, yielding results of value to the 
imagination rather than the palate. In early days, 
however, wild crab apples, with wild grapes and 
wild plums were not despised by pioneer house- 



SEPTEMBER 35 

wives. Mention of these frnits, as cliaracteristic 
of the prairie antnnin, is frequent in the early rec- 
ords of traveler and resident in this region. The 
grapes are noticed by Pittman, before the Revolu- 
tionary War, and in later years by Flagg, Woods, 
and Mrs. Farnhani.-' Flagg writes of ''extensive 
groves'^ of Avild plum and crab apple. Probably 
the general character of these ''groves" has not 
changed much since 1838. In her list of fruits, 
Mrs. Farnham includes papaws and persim- 
mons.'* Nowadays, grapes from well-trimmed 
vineyards, plums and crab apples from carefully 
nurtured orchard or yard have practically de- 
stroyed any lively interest in the fruits in their na- 
tive state, except in the minds of roving boys or 
others with a poetic fanc}' for things wild and 
smacking of the untilled soil. Once when the fruit 
was ripe, Curtis and I were nearing a little thicket 
of wild plums along the edge of a farmer's field, 
when the farmer appeared, driving a wagon across 
the field and shouting and gesticulating, apparent- 
ly in a very angry state of mind. We confessed 
as he drove up, but he was not concerned \\4th a 
few plums; his warning had been for town boys 
\\dth guns, in the big cornfield, "after his chick- 
ens." 

The boys are probably gathering black walnuts 

3 Conii)are the footnote on page 24. 

4 See Appendix, Note 2. 



36 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

in the Jasper County woods these days. It is the 
season, also, when one may walk or wheel along- 
country roads to some remembered patch of hazel 
shrubbery, and till one's pocket ^vith the brown 
nuts — having modest hope that some few may 
prove edible. Mrs. Farnham writes of the "cory- 
lus ' ' unfolding its young leaves, and describes the 
hazel copses at some length, as making ^^one of 
the most picturesque features of our landscape." 
A few days ago, in hazel brush along a hilly, little- 
traveled road, a half mile or so from any house, 
we found an unexpected reminder of summer — a 
somewhat frayed dickcissel nest, with one blue 
egg still intact though ancient. Someway this 
solitary abandoned egg produced on imagination 
a deeper sense of the wastefulness of nature than 
the thousands of battered osage oranges, the in- 
numerable plums and grapes and nuts that no man 
or beast would ever enjoy, and that no kindly soil 
would ever nourish to growth. 

Charles City to MarshaUtoivn, September 9, 1906. 
In the park square at Charles City this morning, 
the waddling grackles were silently feeding on the 
ground and a red-eyed vireo sang in subdued 
strains from the trees. Along the river banks the 
heads of western ironweed, lifted on tall stems, 
flourished in quite conspicuous mass, and a monk- 
ev-flower almost within the water added a bit of 



SEPTEMBER 37 

rich color. '^Violet-purple," Gray's Mamial calls 
the corolla of this species. Low in a dry old bor- 
row-pit near Mason City a prairie gentian in fine 
bloom suggested coming days of frost on this 
*'warni" day. It was probably the abundance of 
flaring golden composites that led Flagg to write, 
in 1838, that the autumnal bloom of the prairies 
is of yellow character. The statement remains 
true in part, at least for the rapid traveler over 
dry open country, but one must not forget the lib- 
eral display of purplish tints, and certain pro- 
nounced effects of white, particularly in the woods 
or in low, damp soils. 

It was a hot, dusty ride, in a train of common 
coaches only, down the familiar road from Mason 
City to Marshalltown today. Men shuffled un- 
easily in their seats, some of them in their shirt- 
sleeves, and weary mothers murmured to peevish 
babies. The conductor exclaimed, ''This is the 
Avorst possible sort of day," and consoled himself 
for his hard present duties by planning an early 
fishing trip, with a friend aboard. The cars were 
crowded with young folks on their way to colleges 
and universities, and with "just folks" returning 
from the Minnesota State Fair — a portion of that 
exodus which annually creates a bedlam for a few 
days at the St. Paul Union Station. 

This railroad has had a rather varied history 
for the fortv vears or so of its existence. The 



38 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

writer vaguely remembers a scene in his early 
boyhood when the people of his town, with the 
famous man for whom it w^as named, gathered one 
day to greet the first train to arrive from the 
north. In those remote days some of the engines 
were named instead of numbered, and appeared 
in a certain poetic personal character to the vil- 
lage lads. How often one boy cried out to an- 
other, ''There's 'C. C. Oilman' just coming in" — 
or perhaps it was "going for good." Some years 
the road, like others, suffered much from flooded 
streams. Once at least the restive waters surged 
far beyond their proper channel till they stood — 
was it "up to the car window^s"? — high over the 
tracks at the Marshalltown station. Just before 
the St. Ijouis Exposition, much regrading was 
done along certain portions of the road. The 
Italian laborers were picturesque figures, and 
their bake-ovens, dug into the clay banks of the 
cuts, looked curiously foreign and primitive. Cur- 
tis, who had spent a year or more in Italy, once 
tried to get some of the workmen to talk in their 
native Neapolitan, but for some reason conversa- 
tion seemed a lost — or concealed — art with them 
then and there. 

Today in the northern pastures the cattle stood 
in still groups, languidly, under the scrub oaks; 
farther south they had waded deep into the slug- 
gish sloughs. For long distances the burning piles 



SEPTEMBER 39 

of worn-out ties increased the heat. Yet one re- 
membered how the right-of-way in spring was 
decorated with orange puccoon, violets, straw- 
berry blossoms, and later showed extensive gar- 
dens of white anemones and purple spiderwort. 
Now, except where some employee has his little 
patch of potatoes, or where the fires of the sec- 
tion-gang have devoured and blackened, there are 
almost continuous belts of autumnal blossoms — 
sunflowers, goldenrods, bright asters, and vervain 
being prominent. Beyond, are cornfields dotted 
with pumpkins, the glare and rumble of threshing 
scenes, and once or twdce a kingfisher speeding 
above a pond. 

Des Moines, September 9, 1906. 
The sumac foliage is reddening, and the locusts 
along the low banks of the Skunk near Colfax are 
already tinged with yellow. Sumac seems to have 
been among the plants most frequently observed 
by the early travelers in the prairie region. It is 
mentioned, for example, by Woods, in 1822, and by 
Flagg, in 1838. Miss Cooper begins her rather 
elaborate account of autumnal foliage in mid- 
September. One finds these entries for the month : 
'^September 12: The woods, generally, are green 
as midsummer — but a small shrub here and there 
is faintly touched with autumnal colors. . . 
September 25 : The woods are still green, but 
some trees in the village are beginning to look au- 



40 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

tumn-like. . . September 27 : Decided white 
frost last night. The trees show it perceptibly in 
a heightened tint of coloring, rising here and 
there; some single maples in the village streets 
are vividly crimson. Bnt the general tint is still 
green. ' ' ^ 

But summer often calls out her reserve forces 
of heat at this time of the year, as if in final angry 
effort to win the battle against the challenging au- 
tumn. Or is it in requital for the hours autumn 
stole from her in July or August ? A day or two 
ago a temperature of 102 degrees was reported 
from Bismarck. Early last month in a morning 
stroll about the capitol grounds there, while the 
blossoms of milkweeds and lepachys, and the 
young Arkansas kingbirds still in the nest gave 
witness of summer, the mercury was only a few 
degrees above the freezing point. Today, with a 
maximum of 92 degrees, is said to be the hottest 
day of the year in Des Moines. But there is no 
midsummer sultriness, and a fair breeze was blow- 
ing in Union Park. There the tree locusts sang 
in strenuous rhythm, but the phoebe strains of the 
chickadees recalled cooler hours of spring and 
winter. A scattered flock of perhaps a score of 
robins was feeding in the park meadows, and the 
frequent notes of the bluebirds had, to fancy, the 
languor of fall rather than of summer. The 

■5 See Appendix, Note 3. 



SEPTEMBER 41 

gracklos in congregation were making spirited con- 
versation across the street and one heard the rat- 
tling ahirni, not the vigorous 'Vjuirk/' of the red- 
headed woodpecker. Swifts and nighthawks — 
sailing in numbers above the city toward evening 
— were among the few birds we noticed with voice 
or manner suggestive of summer at its height. 

''A Well," says Carlyle,^ "is in all i)laces a 
beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life 
from the hard earth. ' ' Today certainly, one found 
the cold spring water in the Park, with its strong 
taste of the tonic iron, a welcome refreshment. 
How picturesque the children were, scrambling 
down the steps to the spring, or waiting in line, 
cups in hand, for their turn at the impartial foun- 
tain. One does not probably often think of the 
prairie country as a region of springs, but it has 
its fair share. Personal memory recalls a Minne- 
sota farm, where the milk was always deliciously 
cool, freshly brought from its shelter by the "Big 
Spring'^; the trickling stream from the bank of a 
railway cut, in a walk from college town to woods, 
at which many a scholar of note as well as many 
a section-hand has halted for a drink; the flowing 
waters in Washington Park, Chicago, where on a 
blistering day a group of Hawkeyes gathered for 
picnic reunion found a temperate solace and stim- 
ulus. In Burlington, the visitor to Crapo Park as 

fi In Heroes ami Rero-Worship: The Hero as Prophet. 



42 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

he passes the cave spring under the arching bluff 
is told a pretty legend of Indian chief and milk- 
maiden. In some poetic sense, the idealistic Icar- 
ians found a center for their domain of three thou- 
sand acres in the community spring, still visible 
beneath the tall cottonwoods at the crossing of 
lane and highway/ 

Mason City, September 3, 1907. 
Walking up the main street here today, one 
noted dozens of great ^^waterbugs'' dead on the 
sidewalks. These are perhaps the largest hemip- 
tera commonly seen in town quarters in the state. 
They are considerably bigger than the ordinary 
cicadas — and those famous insects are rather 
more frequently heard than seen by most of us. 
The june-bug by its noisy methods and very con- 
siderable hitting power produces an exaggerated 
impression of its size, and of course it is not really 
a ^'bug'' but a beetle. There seemed to be little 
bird song here today, except for a few feeble 
strains from a warbling vireo. Of this species 
our own favorite memory is of certain summer 
morning hours, when we listened to its fluent song 
in a fine old orchard, on the edge of an Iowa town, 
and watched its charming movements to and from 
the dainty pendent nest. 

7 A spring reported as unfailing in dry weather, on January 
1, 1913. 



SEPTEMBEIR 43 

One of the fascinating things about following 
flower lore or bird lore as a lifelong pastime, is 
the delight of carrying childhood memories into 
later years, when the burden and the heat of the 
day are oppressive. Today even some of the com- 
mon weeds here are rich in associations of boy- 
ish hours in front-yard, back-yard, pasture, and 
street-side. Here is ' ' sweet clover. ' ' We boys did 
not add "white," for in our day and locality the 
yellow was practicall}^ unknown or else neglected. 
Nor did we ever call the plant "melilot," appro- 
priate as that name might have been. How early 
in our career its tall stems, its pungent scent, its 
not indelicate racemes were familiar and beloved. 
Here is mayweed — ''dog fennel" if you ^\ill, but 
not with our approval — and a glimpse of its 
sturdy plebeian form brings back strangely famil- 
iar though dim sensations of summer evening- 
drives along dusty country roads wdiere weeds 
grew rank, the dickcissel sang from almost every 
fence and wdre, showing the yellow of his breast 
to match the yellow disks of mayweed. Here are 
the green spikes of common plantain. The ap- 
pearance even of the stamens — anthers and stalks 
— was vividly impressed on boyish memory. The 
leaves had their own functions in the world of 
boyish play. The stout ribs were always wonder- 
ful, often separated from the blade that their iden- 
tity might be more clearly defined. The fruited 



44 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

spikes made part of our harvest ; we wondered at 
the compact rows, and stripping off the grains, 
handled them as a farmer might sample the qual- 
ity of his new wheat. 

Down in the channel of the Shell Rock, near the 
bridge of the principal street, sunflowers are the 
most gaudy blossoms, but far more delicate, 
though robust, are the rose-purple masses of false 
dragonhead. This plant has a wide habitat, but 
while not distinctive of this region it offers one of 
the most brilliant flower effects to be found along- 
some of our Iowa streams at this time of year. 

In small Iowa towns, if a stranger is directed to 
^^the park," he is likely to find it a rectangle oc- 
cupying one block in the business section, sur- 
rounded on from one to four sides by commercial 
or public buildings. This type is found in scores 
of communities, with minor variations in plan of 
walks, in fountains and bandstand, and in the na- 
ture and grouping of herbs, shrubbery, and trees. 
In county-seats, the court-house sometimes fills a 
portion of the space, and the grounds are known 
as the ''court-liouse park," or ''the court-house 
square." Here, the home of county government 
is across the street from the park, which is never- 
theless a typical parked city square. It is tra- 
versed by diagonal paths meeting at tlie center, 
which is adorned with a swan fountain, with flower 
urns on the edge of the basin. The larger trees 



SEPTEMBER 45 

arc mainly soft inai)lc's and olins. Wooden benches 
are scattered over the areas, while a wooden, 
gaily-painted bandstand, with a miniature dome, 
has served for the minstrels of summer evening 
concerts. On one side of the park there is a me- 
morial to the local Civil War soldiers — an iron- 
gray monument some twenty-five feet high, with 
the figure of an infantry-man at the summit and 
names of individual soldiers with the roll of their 
battles inscribed on the sides. Flanking the mon- 
ument are small cannons, mounted on brick and 
stone masonry. The supreme marvel of that other 
village park where we boys once played pom-pom- 
pullaway, crack the whip, one-two-three-one, and 
ate ice-cream and strawberries on a May evening, 
is missing here. It was a ^'liberty-pole," nearly 
or quite a hundred feet tall, mast-style, with a 
' 'landing," erected and cherished by an old man- 
o '-war's man, stranded in some manner out here 
on the prairies, midway from sea to sea. On the 
Fourth a nol)le flag floated from the tip from the 
cannon salute at dawn, through the reading of the 
Declaration, passing of parade, merriment of af- 
ternoon sports, till the last farmer's team started 
homeward, and the last rocket had flared against 
the night sky. 

Landscape gardening and its allied arts are ap- 
parently making excellent progress in Iowa. The 
parks of Des Moines are dignified, even noble, in 



46 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA ^ 

situation and plan, rich in jjlant and bird life, and 
of high value to the social life of their city. Along- 
the great border rivers of the state the high bluffs 
offer frequent sites adapted for spacious and var- 
ied recreation grounds. Slowly also, the state is 
erecting monuments memorial of the great events 
and great persons of her history, from the days 
of early exploration to those of her recent prom- 
inence in the national councils. The days will 
soon pass, if not already passed, in which the 
stranger can with fairness say of the citizens of 
Iowa: 

They have no love for bird or flowers, 

No reverence for their past ; 
They sing not, ''Nature, Art are ours, 

We cherish, hold them fast." 

Of fighting chief and praying Marquette 

Along the mighty Stream, 
From days of feverish toil and fret 

They save no hours to dream. 

Wild roses bloom above their great 

Who lived and died for truth. 
But they mould not for a nobler fate 

The spirits of their youth. 

Man lives not for himself alone, 
Needs beauty more than bread — 

'Tis a people lost till they atone 
To the unborn babes and the dead ! 



SEPTEMBER 47 

Grinnell, September 6, 1907. 

It seemed good to one coming from the Lake 
Superior region to reacli again tlie land of abun- 
dant meadowlarks. They are still numerous here 
— stately, alert figures on the slopes of pasture 
hills — though their song has only faint remin- 
iscence of its spring vigor.^ The warbling vireo 
sings in quite spirited tone occasionally, but the 
robin's tune is rather subdued, and the catbird 
merely mews near its summer nest in the barberry 
hedge, decorated now by plentiful scarlet fruit. 
The goldfinches dip chattering above the garden 
and a hummingbird still hovers, darts, and sips 
among the trumpet vines. 

In the fields north of the campus are pastures 
where low, dry hills rise above the meandering 
sloughs and a small ice-pond. Here one now finds 
a considerable number of herbs in varied bloom — 
on isolated stalks or in social masses according to 
specific habit. Boneset is thick along the border 
of the slough. In boyhood days we gathered it in 
the autumn, to dry in the shed attic, preparatory 
to making medicinal tea in days of ' ' spring fever. ' ' 
We called the plant 'Hhoroughwort," and any 
other name was a sign of plebeian training; just 
as we challenged with '^rhubarb" the vulgar taste 
which spoke of ''pieplant.'' Among other bloom- 
ing plants here are asters, goldenrods, sunflowers, 

8 See Appendix, Note 4. 



48 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

coneflowers, yarrow, arrowhead, sneezeweed, even- 
ing primrose, blue vervain, lousewort, ironweed, 
Indian mallow, lobelias, loosestrife, gerardia, and 
trumpet weed. Some are at the height of inflor- 
escence, others long past their prime. The iron- 
weed now ranges from the royal purple of vigor- 
ous bloom to the dull brown of faded heads, in a 
series of delicatel}^ graduated shades. Interest in 
autumnal colors among herbs is not limited to blos- 
soms. The chocolate-brown tints of dock foliage 
are familiar and welcome at this time of year ; the 
masses of smartweed in the swamps are often al- 
most purple; the open involucres of aster heads 
have a silvery shine. Today in these fields the 
fruit of several species of milkweed hang un- 
opened, still green, but a little later the silken 
coma and the bright linings of the pods will bring 
pleasure to many eyes. Last year at this date, the 
pods were already opening in the northern part of 
the state. 

Flagg writes in 1838 of the prairie goldenrod 
*' spreading out into a Afield of the cloth of gold,' " 
and among other flowers of the season mentions 
asters, arrowhead, blazing star, "all species" 
of lobelia, eupatorkini, gentians, including the 
fringed, and sunflowers ' ' in rich variety. ' ' Woods 
writing of Illinois in 1822 mentions dock, fennel, 
goldenrod, snakeroot, gentians, balm, horehound, 
sage, coriander, peppermint, and pennyroyal — 




From a photograph by Maty Chamberlain 

A Back-yard at Grinnell 



SEPTEMBER 51 

seemiiii»" to have some special interest in the mints. 
At five o'clock yesterday afternoon, thonsands 
of people were on the fairgrounds ; at eight o'clock 
the place was like a banquet-hall deserted and the 
fair for this year was over. As a beautiful sun- 
set lingered beyond the rolling fields, the maple 
rows along Frisley Road, and the dark Sugar 
Creek woods, four nighthawks sailed silently 
above the grounds, the insects rendered a contin- 
uous musical program, and a mile away the church 
bells were ringing for the midweek prayer-meet- 
ings. In one booth some farmer folks were serv- 
ing su])per, making j)lans meanwhile to drive home 
with the children, ''do the chores," and return for 
another load. In a small tent a palmist was still 
busy, and the light mthin threw fantastic shad- 
ows on the thin walls. Gas lights soon flamed and 
flared here and there, and a lantern will-o'-the- 
wisp wandered about the gypsy camp — some six 
or seven canvas-covered wagons at one side of the 
grounds. The man and w^oman of the merry-go- 
round were counting up receipts ; venders were 
crying ''the last chance" to waning audiences; the 
gypsy queen was making final strenuous but futile 
appeal to the curiosity of a lingering country lad 
or two. The grounds were strewn with the cus- 
tonuiry litter from three days of lively pastime. 
The weather had been favorable, and the secretary 
turned his kev in the office door with a satisfied 



52 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

air. In a light wagon a group of Indian men and 
women, who a short time before had been amusing 
the crowd with native dances on the judges^ stand, 
were preparing for the twenty-five mile drive 
homeward to the ^^Reservation." The gypsies 
were to remain on the grounds over night, travel- 
ing the next day along country roads westward to 
another local fair. At various booths they were 
asking, of comrades of a week, "Where are you 
going next!" A man answered, "To Grundy 
Center." A woman responded, in the drawling, 
weary tone of one who had experienced the vicis- 
situdes of fortune, "To Marengo. We have given 
up Newton — he thought it wasn't worth while to 
sue them ; might make trouble for another year. ' ' 
In the town trees the katydid uttered his own pre- 
cise, insistent phrases, so far as one knows taking 
no thought of the morrow. 

Des Moines, September 7, 1907. 
Yesterday through the car windows, appeared 
the canvas-covered wagons of the fair-ground gyp- 
sies, in far-stretched caravan crawling over the 
Jasper County hills. The most distinguished 
flower of the right-of-way was the rose-red blaz- 
ing star, in frequent brilliant patches. Blue ver- 
vain fringed the borders of the sloughs, ironweed 
nodded in low meadows, wild bergamot formed 
miniature forests on the slopes of upland pastures. 



SEPTEMBER 53 

while arrowhead showed its green leaves and white 
blossoms down by muddy waters. Ijousewort 
clung- to the grassy banks of cuts, and goldenrod 
was ^^ everywhere." The coneflowers still appear 
in large numbers, but a great many of the yellow 
rays have fallen of late. 

This morning the trolley took us past thistles, 
sunflowers, smartweed, great masses of white san- 
icle and purple lobelia, past a park of noble oaks, 
and vineyards with heavy clusters and withering 
foliage, to the Fort. A warm sun shone in a per- 
fectly cloudless sky. From the dusty crushed- 
rock pavements the noonday glare was like that of 
a desert ; and a very summery heat was reflected 
from the bright red, shadeless brick walls of the 
houses of officers and the barracks of rank and 
file. From the large, level parade, treeless, close- 
mown, with a few" fruited dandelion heads and no 
bloom except for a little white clover, the crickets 
were chirping, while over its expanse hovered 
white, orange, and monarch butterflies, and locusts 
and grasshoppers sprang from the grass on every 
side. The parade is on somewhat high ground; 
from it one gazes far off over farm groves, ripe 
cornfields with tall stalks tipped by light brown 
tassels, and a wide expanse of rolling prairie be- 
yond. Five or six miles across fields and mead- 
ows rose the great dome of the Capitol, at that dis- 
tance silvery rather than golden in the brilliant 



54 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

sunlight. Soldiers in blue and others in brown 
khaki moved singly or in small groups across the 
parade. A young guard rested in the shade of 
one of the small elms while the two privates he was 
commanding passed into the scorching heat with 
lawn-mower and sickle. Mule teams were mowing 
the lawns between the officers ' row and the trolley 
station, while another team was drawing a mowing 
machine farther out to a wide meadow. Summer- 
like, too, was the sharp crescendo of the cicada, 
mingling with the piercing cries of a flicker. 

Beyond the stable yards, with their hundreds 
and hundreds of cavalry horses, near the western 
border of the Reservation, is a considerable area 
of swampy ground, today almost a tropical jungle 
of tall weeds. The brown-headed cattails are fully 
ten feet high, and so are the stout sunflowers, mth 
two goldfinches busy about the giant heads. Here 
are bindweed, white-involucred spurge, blue ver- 
vain, tangled masses of yellow wood-sorrel, a 
clump of the '^ smallest of asters" — a familiar 
weed with none of the beauty one associates with 
the genus. The bumblebees are on the thistle 
heads, and big black-and-gold spiders lurk near the 
centers of their large wheel webs, geometric, tra- 
versed by a thousand delicate spokes. A golden 
array of striking long-bracted tickseed-sunflowers 
is characteristic of the locality and the season. 

Standing before the long riding-hall and look- 



SEPTEMBER 55 

iiig through the open doors at the farther end, one 
views the prairie landscape like a framed picture. 
But the foreground is dramatic rather than pic- 
torial, for cavalrymen are training their horses 
there. The government nniles serve for the mow- 
ing machines, but these nobler animals are learn- 
ing to lie down at command, to hear without alarm 
the close report of a pistol, to carry double, to re- 
main lying quiet when another horse and rider ap- 
proach at a gallop. This sunny morning the rid- 
ing hall itself is deserted, save for one young sol- 
dier training his horse to take the hurdles without 
shying. Over and over the performance was 
urged, encouraged by the rider's strong pull at the 
bits, by curses, and now and then by caressing of 
the tossing head and shivering neck. These were 
scenes of strenuous activity, but not far beyond 
the hall is an old orchard, a reposeful relic of the 
days when the grounds belonged to individuals — 
men of peace. 

McGregor, September 9, 1908. 
A few days ago we camped — in a hotel — at 
Clear Lake. Thence we marched — by train — 
about thirty-seven parasangs, to the borders of the 
Father of Waters. The route lay through the 
southern part of Winneshiek County, whose cap- 
ital, Decorah, has no small reputation for land- 
scape beauty. The county contains other post- 
offices with picturesque names — Burroak, Bluff- 



56 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

ton, Canoe, Castalia, Festina, Fort Atkinson, Hes- 
per, Plymouth Rock, and Washington Prairie. Its 
principal streams are the Upper Iowa River, the 
Turkey River, and Canoe Creek. By leaving the 
train at Fort Atkinson and walking a few miles 
northwest, along the valley of the Turkey, we 
might have reached Spillville, a small Bohemian 
settlement on the banks of the river. It was in 
this village, one is told, that Dvorak composed the 
larger part of his "New World Symphony," as 
well as a quartet and a quintet for strings, all em- 
bodying his theories of the true materials for Am- 
erican music. In our supposedly prosaic state, the 
mingling elements of this story are surely worth 
a passing attention — a Bohemian composer, 
working with enthusiasm in a Bohemian settle- 
ment on a river named for the most stately of 
American game birds, in a county named for an 
Indian chief; his composition based on melodies 
of African Americans, and boldly called the ''New 
World Symphony." 

From Clear Lake to McGrregor some eighty or 
ninety species of plants in bloom were noted. 
Goldenrods and asters, as befits the season, are 
among the most conspicuous. Greene enumerates 
twenty kinds of goklenrod and thirty-eight kinds 
of aster found in the state. The goldenrods seem 
to vary more in form of inflorescence than in col- 
oring; the asters are of all shades of white, violet. 



SEPTEMBER 57 

purple, and amethyst, as well as distinctly varied 
in height of stem, size and style of head, and social 
habit. Bring a sprig of prairie goklenrod to a 
southern maiden, and one may likely hear her say : 
*'AVhy, that isn't anything like our Georgia gold- 
enrod.'' Repeat the process with a girl of On- 
tario, and she may exclaim, ^'Perhaps this is your 
goldenrod, but it isn't half so fine as our Canadian 
species." Among our own varieties, the flat- 
topped ones look heavy and plebeian compared 
with those of more delicate racemose inflores- 
cence; and the zigzag has quite an unusual and 
freakish appearance, suggestive of humorous ca- 
price in nature when she planned its form. Surely 
one of the most brilliant asters now in bloom is the 
^^New England." It is abundant along the roads 
about Charles City, and near Beulah its deep red- 
purple blossoms were grouped for miles and miles 
on both sides of the railroad, in one place making 
a unified color effect in a meadow an acre or more 
in extent. It sometimes has a strong but not un- 
pleasant scent. Goldenrods and asters are among 
the last flowers to fail before the winter cold in 
the prairie country, as popular poetry has often 
recorded.^ 

The coneflowers are out in force. In woods near 
the shore of Clear Lake, a great clump of the 
^'tall" species merited the popular name, for some 

9 See A|)penflix, Note o. 



58 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

of the stalks were seven or eight feet high. In this 
or that locaHty one readily finds the ' ^ sweet, ' ' the 
^^thin-leaved," and the "Black-eyed Susans." 
Many kinds of mint are now blooming; probably 
none mth more brilliant effect than the false drag- 
onhead, now found in masses of pinkish-red bloom 
along the Cedar at Charles City, and the Shell 
Rock at Mason City. Sneezeweed is flourishing. 
This somewhat inartistic popular name might well 
be rejected for the resonant heleniiun autiimnale, 
suggestive both of the season, and of the far- 
famed ' ' matter of Troy. ' ' Along the valley of the 
Wapsipinicon, west of New Hampton, the beauti- 
ful cardinal-flower brought back memories of the 
cranberry bogs of Cape Cod, with some of these 
grand lobelias adding their colors to those of ripe 
cranberries, and of the red dresses worn by the 
pickers. 

At Charles City one specimen of yellowish gen- 
tian was found which Greene records as "not com- 
mon." Its former scientific name was gentiana 
alba, though apparently it was never called white 
gentian. The change to gentiana favida is an ex- 
ample of alterations the amateur will favor, be- 
cause they indicate more accurately some prom- 
inent characteristic of the plant in the field. Along 
the bluffs here the harebell is in bloom. With the 
writer, it has been associated with the wide tree- 
less plains of Saskatchewan and with the rocky 



SEPTEMBEii 59 

shores of Lake Superior, gray witli fog, rather 
than with the homeland; but says White of Sel- 
borne, that region yields the richest results to the 
naturahst which is most carefully examined. 
Here also is its relative, a giant by comparison, the 
tall bellfiower. Along the grassy summits of the 
high bluffs there yet linger a few blossoms of the 
smaller enchanter's nightshade, though the plant 
now seems to be mainly in burry fruit. There is 
something poetic in the English name, but the 
Latin name is almost a poem in itself — circaea 
alpina. The last edition of Gray's Manual gives 
its habitat thus: ^'deep woods, Labrador to Alas- 
ka, south to Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, north- 
eastern Iowa, and South Dakota," and Greene 
notes it as " not common. ' ' Numerous other herbs 
and trees which the Hawkeyes may claim are 
found only in this section of the state — considered 
by many to be decidedly our most picturesque re- 
gion. The river bluffs here are majestic. One 
may find routes for a ramble which are almost 
mountainous in general character; may wander 
till clear sense of distance and direction are lost, 
nothing appears but silent timl)ered summits and 
silent valleys with few^ residents, and with a sensa- 
tion of excited bewilderment, one asks for guid- 
ance to the homeward path. In this section of the 
state the deer lingered late,'" today in certain 

i'> See Appendix, Note 16. 



60 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

streams the brook trout are said to flash and rise 
and strike ; here grow the balsam, the white pine, 
the canoe birch. 

This is the time of year for the flocking of but- 
terflies as well as birds. At Clear Lake hundreds 
of the small white and yellow kinds were flutter- 
ing, in intricate design, a few feet above the level 
of the main business street. Here today twelve or 
fifteen monarchs were sailing among the trees 
along the summit of the bluff, as if searching com- 
rades for the long trip southward. The writer 
once saw the gathering of the hosts, in central 
Iowa, in September if memory is correct. Thou- 
sands of monarchs were clinging to the leaves and 
branches of the large soft maples of a country 
grove some distance from any road or house. They 
seemed very restless, detachments of a few scores 
or hundreds continually flying from the trees into 
the air for a few rods, then returning, as if un- 
certain whether to go or remain. The prepara- 
tion for the southward flight of these butterflies 
is so conspicuous and interesting that even the 
large city dailies sometimes give a report of it. 
Two years ago, about the fifth of September, the 
Minneapolis Journal devoted perhaps a quarter of 
a column to an article on the subject by Miss Flor- 
ence E. Lilhe of St. Anthony Park. Miss Lillie 
told the reader of the distant goals of the flight — 
Florida, Central America, etc. She also stated 



SEPTEMBER 61 

that in 1905 she foiiiul six monarch eg-gs laid in 
September, hatched them indoors, and that tlie in- 
sects emerged from the pupa stage as butterflies 
in October, but were chilled to death by an unex- 
pected drop in temperature about New Year's 
Day.^^ 

Dragonflies also were darting along the sides of 
the bluffs today. We watched the flight of two 
tree locusts and heard the antiphonal calls of oth- 
ers. It is suri^rising how rarely one sees these 
cicadas unless by careful observation, even when 
their rasping notes are almost deafening.^- To- 
night the loud insect chorus along the shores of 
the moonlit river was persistent — soothing or 
vexatious according to one's temperament and 
mood. 

Of the towns just over the Mississippi from our 
state, probably none are more interesting histor- 
ically than Nauvoo and Prairie du Chien. The 
statue of Marquette alone might make a visit to 
the latter town worth while to every lover of the 
story of the Great Stream. Landing today from 
the little ferryboat, it was something of a botan- 
ical surprise to find abundant clumps of the stout 
gum-plant in vigorous bloom on the flats between 
the shore and the village proper. This plant has 
a certain attraction in its verv boldness of con- 



11 See Appendix, Note 6. 

12 See Appendix, Note 7. 



62 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

tour, coarseness of flower and involucre, and de- 
cided *' stickiness." The genus, named Grindelia, 
after a Eussian botanist, is a western one in the 
main. One finds its representatives on the plains 
east from the Rockies, and on the clay or gravel 
bluffs of San Juan and Whidby Islands, in Puget 
Sound. Greene gives Grindelia squarrosa — the 
'^ broad-leaved gum-plant" — as ''not common," 
and the writer has so far never observed it in 
lowa.^^ 

James Rischell, in Black Hawk's Autohiog- 
raphy, says of the Foxes: "As late as 1763, 
their village at Prairie du Chien was more sub- 
stantially built and provided with evidences of a 
higher civilization than any other Indian town in 
the Northwest." One can yet see Indians paddling 
across the river to the prairie of the dogs. It was 
somewhere in this vicinity also — just where is 
not clear from the Aiitohiography — that after the 
great massacre of Sacs along the Wisconsin River, 
the defeated Indians attempted to cross the Mis- 
sissippi to possible safety. Black Hawk narrates 
the incident with characteristic simplicity: ''As 
many women as could commenced swimming 
the Mississippi with their children on their backs ; 
a number of them were drowned, and some shot 
before they could reach the opposite shore." 

13 See Appendix, Note 8. Lewis describes it as " Taken at our 
camp at the Maha vilage August ITtli 1804," 



SEPTEMBER 63 

Dubuque, Sopteiiiher 13, 1908. 

Among' some fifteen blossoming herbs noted 
along the streets here to-day is galinsoga — a 
rather curious little composite, now in flourishing 
bloom, bearing the name of a Spanish botanist. 
The Mexican War left some interesting heritage 
to the then new state of Iowa in the form of names 
for counties — Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Palo 
Alto. In other ways the war of 1898 has made 
familiar to Iowa people a considerable number of 
Spanish proper nouns not generally known before. 
But on the whole, the influence of the Spanish lan- 
guage on our life seems far less significant than 
that of the French. In this city, at least, asso- 
ciated with the French people from its origin, and 
no distant neighbor of Julien, Lourdes, Bellevue, 
Lamotte, and Martelle, Dr. Mariano Martinez de 
Galinsoga seems at first thought a somewhat alien 
name. 

In a plot of Dubuque copied at St. Louis in 1843, 
lead is a prominent item in the records of loca- 
tion marks. We read, for example : ''A: un chene 
ayant pour temoins des morceaux de plomb;" 
^'F: divers trous fouilles pour 1 'exploitation du 
mineral de plomb," etc. Conspicuous also in this 
map are the five islands and the great sweeping 
curves of the River. De Quincey, in a note to Tlie 
English Mail-coach, objects to praise of the Missis- 
sippi based on its size. ''The Tiber," he writes. 



64 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

''has contrived to make itself heard of in this 
world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not 
reached as yet by any river, however corpulent, 
of his [the American's] own land. The glory of 
the Thames is measured by the destiny of the pop- 
ulation to which it ministers, by the commerce 
which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire 
in which . . . it is the most influential stream.'' 
One might reply by pointing out that De Quin- 
cey's own tribute to both Tiber and Thames is 
based on quantitative standards largely, but let 
that pass. Few Americans of any degree of cul- 
ture are inclined to lessen the practical or poetic 
glories of any worthy English or continental river. 
Many of us have lingered in affectionate spirit by 
the peaceful meadow reaches of the Tweed near 
Abbotsford, and watched with delight the boat- 
men of the Seine, from the environs of Notre 
Dame de Paris. One at least has followed with 
almost passionate zest the wanderings of the Dud- 
don from its source to the sea. Our danger today, 
one fancies, lies rather in the opposite direction — 
in ignorance of the true majesty of our own home 
waters, in hurried commercial life ashamed of 
silent meditation before the grandeur God has 
granted us for our own. Spirit of the English 
opium-eater, come some beautiful early summer 
morning, and look upon the stream of your former 
disdain from the forward hurricane deck of a slow- 



SEPTEMBER 65 

nioviiig- stoaiiior. Y\)ii(l('r arc i)ietures(iue villages 
nestled along noble bluft's, halfway between water 
and sky ; yonder a gigantic raft of logs from for- 
ests haunted by deer and moose is floating down 
to serve the people of far-off commonwealths. On 
one side of our curving, zigzagging path, lie sand- 
bars dim in the distance, where a stately heron 
now stands alone, unconcerned with national 
jealousy or literary strife. Festoons of frail mist 
linger along the western shores, or search like 
conscious spirits for a pathway inland through 
the ravines hollowed in the majestic headlands. 
Surely you, who fashioned such weird, wonderful 
cadences of musical prose from mere nothings of 
memory, will admire and reverence what Nature 
— or more than Nature — not the American, has 
here wrought for the inspiration of all responsive 
souls. 

It is said that lead was seen at Dubuque by Le 
Seuer in 1700. Julien Dubuque came thither from 
Prairie du Chien in 1788 — making the first white 
settlement within the present area of Iowa. Black 
Hawk writes of the year 1833, ''Passing down the 
Mississippi, I discovered a large collection of peo- 
ple in the mining country, on the west side of the 
river, and on the ground that we had given to our 
relation, Dubuque, a long time ago. I was sur- 
prised at this, as I had understood from our Great 
Father that the Mississippi was to be the dividing 



66 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

line between his red and white children, and he 
did not wish either to cross it. I was mnch pleased 
with this talk, as I knew it would be much better 
for both parties." Black Hawk often refers to 
the mines, and speaks of his own people as occa- 
sional workers in them. 

Spaniard and Frenchman both may suggest the 
great Church of Latin Christianity. On this Sun- 
day morning, crowds of men, women, and children 
are passing along the hilly streets to worship in 
the cathedral. Not many miles from the city, but 
3^et remote from the comparatively stirring scenes 
here, is the Trappist Monastery, affirming, how- 
ever feebly, in however mistaken manner, that the 
life of the spirit is more significant than the life of 
the flesh. As yet Iowa has no Matthew Arnold to 
record in noble verse the profound imaginative 
and spiritual sympathy even a skeptical scientific 
age may have with such a hermitage. We have 
with us daily the pressing concerns of the price of 
corn, the programs for women's clubs, the plans 
for town additions, the latest cures for neuras- 
thenia. Yet even in Iowa, even today, there are 
men who have rejected the world, who have given 
themselves in the ancient manner to the Kingdom 
of Heaven, and rise in the earliest hours of the 
morning to pray for the redemption of man. 




o 
< 



SEPTEMBER 69 

Muscatine, September 14, 1909. 

Coming- down from tlie northern part of the 
state a day or two ago, among the evidences of the 
season observed from the car window were the 
golden masses of partridge pea, the cutting down 
of long ranks of corn, the fall ploughing, the 
gleaming white of a buckwheat field. Approach- 
ing the river from the west, w^e passed sunflowers, 
goldenrods, arrowhead, blazing star, the brown 
heads and foliage of a large cattail swamp — then 
came the less poetic but characteristic extended 
watermelon fields, with green or whitish fruit dot- 
ting the vines so that the total effect of a field sug- 
gested a flat, gigantic, punctate leaf. 

This town is old for this region, and probably 
somewhat conservative. It has its share of his- 
torical interest and natural beauty among the river 
towns. Some of the old homes here have sent out 
well-known scholars and writers to the great 
world. Along the bluffs are some stately man- 
sions that in site, view, furniture, and mural dec- 
orations would not shame an old-world aristoc- 
racy. Eichman closes his interesting essay on 
''Mascoutin'' with this imaginative reference to 
Black Hawk and his great rival: '^Here, doubt- 
less, on many occasions has he stood upon the 
commanding heights overlooking Mascoutin island 
and the Mississippi river, and gazed with awe 
upon the magnificent and extended prospect. 



70 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Here also the eloquent and wily Sac chief Keokuk 
used to hunt and dwell ; the name Keokuk lake still 
serving to designate an expansion at one point of 
the waters of Muscatine slough. ' ' From the point 
of view of the more remote counties of the state, 
it was near here, also, that the death of Black 
Hawk occurred, the desecration of his grave, and 
years later, the destruction of his very bones by 
accidental fire. 

One may see the pearl fishers of the great River 
dredging from their peculiar boats as far north at 
least as McGregor, but the principal button fac- 
tories in the state are now located here. One reads 
at intervals in some Iowa paper of the finding of a 
pearl of great price, either in the Mississippi or in 
some tributary stream. Such news adds a spice 
of romance in a commonwealth a satirical writer 
has declared ^ ' hopelessly sane. ' ' The wild turkeys 
and deer have vanished ; but now and then a golden 
eagle or a timber wolf appears to give one a sense 
of the irreducible wildness of nature, and the 
pearls wait yet for those who search and can find. 

This section of the state has a floral if not a 
faunal character somewhat different from that of 
the northeast counties. Of our large number of 
native trees, for example, according to Greene the 
habitat of the white pine, the balsam fir, the Amer- 
ican yew, and the canoe birch is limited to the 
northeast portion. Probably comparatively few 
citizens know that these trees are natives within 



SEPTEMBER 71 

our borders. According to the same authority, 
the pecan and the redbud are at home only in tliis 
southeastern part of the state. ^^ 

Today the apples are ripe in the orchards, the 
katydids are in emphatic voice along the well 
shaded streets, the sunlight is bright, with quite 
summery warmth. It is pleasant to ramble in 
leisurely fashion down the long highway bridge 
that leads to Illinois. It has no great structural 
beauty, but refreshing breezes blow over it, and it 
affords wonderful views of wooded islands and 
shores far up and down the river. There are boats 
in mid-channel, and there are sandbars where per- 
haps a great blue heron may soon alight. In Mus- 
catine the bridge rises out of a fairly busy city 
street ; at the eastern terminus it leads into a coun- 
try road, without sign of town or village. The 
banks at the Illinois end are now aglow with yel- 
low composites, and the air is heavy with the 
scent of fetid marigold. With reference to the ac- 
quisition of our national domain, we have passed 
in this bridge journeying from the days of Napo- 
leon, from the soil of the Louisiana Purchase, to 
the days of George the Third, to the ^^ Territory 
of the original thirteen states as recognized by 
Great Britain in 1783.'' 

The road bridges of Iowa in general do not make 
a very strong esthetic appeal, yet some of them 
are not without interesting associations, at least 

14 See Appendix, Note 9. 



72 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

for native sons. Under the small wooden bridges 
over creeks and sloughs the plioebe builds year 
after year, sheltering often the cowbird's young 
with her own. From the rough planks one may 
look down in winter on sheets of slaty ice, white- 
edged, or brown weed stalks bending under snow 
or encased in shining frozen rain. The long, high- 
roofed inland river bridge often has quite a charm, 
especially when approached b}^ a woodland road 
suddenly turning to cross the stream. The horses' 
hoofs ring loudly on the heavy flooring. Perhaps 
some stroller stands leaning over the railing, gaz- 
ing at dark waters, peering into pools where the 
catfish famous over a county may be lurking — 
sometimes seen, never yet a captive. An old row- 
boat may be moored by the dense shrubbery along 
the bank. At night one drives cautiously toward 
such a bridge, listening for other approaching 
teams ; gazing off, perhaps, far down stream hop- 
ing to catch a gleam from the light in the home 
farmhouse. In times of great freshets the lesser 
bridges are frequently swept bodily from their 
moorings, and landed in a neighboring cornfield; 
while against the end supports of the larger struc- 
tures great masses of drift are lodged, and the 
waters beneath are angry with swift current and 
foamy whirlpool, dark with soils stolen from the 
crumbling banks, and rising till they threaten to 
flood the floor. 



ff 



^' \ 



OCTOBER 



OCTOBER 

She is coming ! She is coming ! 

Crowned with leaves of crimson dye, 
With grape stains on her beauteous lips, 

And laughter in her eye ; 
Dodging the fast falling nuts 

Jack Frost is scattering free, 
While fire, unconsuming, rests 

On eveiy bush and tree; 
With smoke-veiled face now smiling o 'er us, 
Our dear October stands before us ! 

(Tacitus Hussey, in The River Bend) 



(T3) 



OCTOBER 

Grinnell, October 11, 1884. 

October is supposed to be an especially beauti- 
ful month in this region, but it is sometimes disap- 
pointing. A private record for last year shows 
only about ten days of fine weather, a good many 
rainy days, and more or less haze, mist, fog, sleet, 
and snow. In 1880, the sixteenth was as ^^cold as 
winter," but from the eighteenth to the twenty- 
first we had clear, crisp weather, nearly ideal for 
the season. 

Today some of us followed the course of a little 
stream from the edge of town, southwestward, to 
the Sugar Creek woods. The boys of the town 
are familiar with Sugar Creek, Big Bear Creek, 
Little Bear Creek, and some of them with Rock 
Creek, and many a nameless ^^ slough"; but we 
have nothing in the neighborhood that we call a 
brook. The dictionaries do not seem to define 
these terms for small streams according to our 
local usage. Here we think of a ^' brook" as be- 
longing to a more hilly region than ours, with a 
rapid current, tumbling over boulders or winding 
about rocky precipices — a type of ^vater^vay 

(To) 



76 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

found way back east or up north or way out west. 
Yet this stream of our ramble today has reaches 
of fairly deep channel for its size, flows here and 
there over sandy bars, pebbles, small boulders; 
has miniature waterfalls that make a gurgling 
sound, and all in all has more of brook character 
than many of the streams near town. 

In the higher hard clay or loam banks there are 
holes where we look for bank swallow nests in the 
spring. The principal trees near the channel are 
willows and gnarled wild crab apples — now with 
fruit about as ripe as it ever gets, though green 
and hard. On the levels above the slopes of the 
valley are osage hedges along the borders of farm 
fields, where in places one can find bittersweet and 
wild grapes. On the more open summits the prai- 
rie chickens sometimes gather in the spring to hold 
their love tournaments — curious proceedings in 
both sounds and movements. From a hillside now 
and then one can pick up a sparkling geode. After 
crossing a rough, rather remote country road, the 
stream runs through a hilly farm owned by a man 
who lives in town. He is a graduate of an eastern 
college who came west not to seek his fortune in 
the usual sense, but to recover the lost fortune of 
health. There are few if any log cabins now left 
in this vicinity, but the small house on this farm is 
suggestive of pioneer life, and the farm, not close 
to neighbors, composed of some rough hilly lands. 




O 
Q 

O 

<5 
O 

w 
o 

O 



OCTOBER 79 

and near fairly heavy timber, always seems in 
some degree lonely and hazardous. 

We saw one flock of ten or twelve meadowlarks, 
some of them singing in tones that suggested a 
longing for the warmer south. The horned larks 
in flocks of fifteen or twenty were darting about 
the pastures, persistent in their faint warblings, 
while now and then one would light on a fence and 
sing a monotonous ditty over and over, with much 
enthusiasm. A large hawk, perhaps a marsh har- 
rier, was sailing in low, wide circles, finally sweep- 
ing down to a fence post, where he tipped his 
big body up and down till he found equilibrium. 
The bluebirds are now in family flocks, keeping 
fairly close together, singing only the delicate 
notes that seem to suggest languor or pathos. In 
the woods the white-throated sparrows were flit- 
ting about, on or near the ground, silent except for 
occasional low call notes. They appeared to be 
rather shy. Thousands of grasshoppers were 
lively in and over the grasses. Here and there a 
late sprig of goldenrod shone with undimmed 
brightness, and there w^ere a good many violets in 
the fields, though not in the profusion of spring 
days. The violets have been blooming for about 
two weeks. 



80 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Davenport, October 25, 1885. 

For a few days here we have had perfect Octo- 
ber weather — cahn, clear skies; clear, sweet at- 
mosphere bathing the terraced bluffs, the broad 
river winding between wooded banks and the 
spires and walls of Davenport and the sister cities 
across the Mississippi. 

About the sawmills one finds scenes quite un- 
known to the inland country. Along the shore 
lie great log-rafts anchored, waiting for the end- 
less chain and the roar of rapid steel teeth. Lum- 
bermen stalk with the nonchalance of the expert 
over the dipping, heaving, slippery logs, selecting, 
one by one, the next victims for the hungry jaws. 
At least once in a lifetime, a person can watch 
with keen interest the dumb, creeping approach 
of the monsters up the long runway, listen to the 
snarling crescendo and groaning diminuendo of the 
destroyer — and shaper, maker — and whiff with 
zest the scents of water-soaked bark, newly cut 
lumber, and mountainous heaps of sawdust almost 
as fragrant and as golden as the straw stack be- 
side the thrashing-machine. The logs all bear the 
brand of some company; from the northern forest 
where the axes fell to these shores where cant- 
hook, peavey, and chain guide to the great saws, 
this industry is a private one. 

There are in this neighborhood reminders of a 
more destructive industry, and one too important 



OCTOBER 81 

and extensive for private control. At old Fort 
Armstrong a few cannon and mortars still frown 
down the river. We visited the Arsenal. Here 
are perhaps a dozen very large, bare, forbidding 
looldng buildings, filled with machinery, ammuni- 
tion, and other military equipment. In the yard 
are hundreds of cannon, most of them of recent 
make and intended for service, but some of them 
trophies of the Revolutionary, Mexican, and Civil 
wars. Some are decorated with coats-of-arms, and 
bear inscriptions in English, French, or other for- 
eign language. The cannon were all unmounted, 
and so appeared strangely to one whose chief ideas 
of big guns were gained from Fourth of July sa- 
luting specimens, or from pictures in books. Near 
at hand are pyramids of cannon balls and shells, 
packed with mathematical precision. Just now 
there are only some sixty men at work in the ar- 
senal shops, but one is told that in emergency the 
plant could equip about 2,500 fighting men a day. 
The present force is engaged in making harnesses, 
stoves, etc., for other arsenals and for the army 
posts. To the peaceful common citizen the whole 
place seemed a rather drowsy one, and the busi- 
ness one involving wasteful expense, but the loyal 
officer who conducted us about the grounds de- 
clared if the government entered into war within 
a century it would pay to maintain this arsenal. 
We listened one dav to an instructive lecture bv 



82 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Professor Frederick Starr, an enthusiastic yomii^ 
naturalist from Coe College. The famous Acad- 
emy of Science here is an interesting place to visit 
for anyone who cares for natural history. Here 
at present among other objects can be seen a few 
live rattlesnakes, the first ones some of us had 
seen in Iowa, though we were born and had always 
lived in the state. 

To one living in the central prairie counties, the 
hills here seem semi-mountainous, and a few days 
spent partly in climbing them, up and down, 
brought aching muscles, and a sense of having had 
quite a novel experience. About the only birds to 
greet us on this visit were a chickadee, singing his 
"real song," and a robin volunteering a brisk, 
merry farewell to the season from the top of a 
tall poplar. 

Grinnell, October 22, 1886. 

Walked to the woods on the nineteenth and on 
the twentieth. A few frogs still continue their 
croaking, which for some reason nearly always 
gives one a sense of loneliness. Insect life is yet in 
almost summer richness. The belated sprays of 
goldenrod are haunted by little greenish beetles, 
about a quarter of an inch long ; and on one sprig 
we found a single lytta atrata crawling. On the 
ground the black carabidae run to cover. One or 
more of these beetles can often be found under a 
stone, a piece of lumber or a bit of bark, and they 
seem abundant till late in the season. Among 



OCTOBER 83 

other kinds of beetle eoininoiily seen here, l)ut in 
summer rather than in autumn, are the lightning- 
bugs, the june-bugs, the ladybirds, the whirligigs, 
and carrion beetles. Some kinds of bugs are still 
lively, and small moths, little white and yellow 
butterflies with an occasional monarch represent 
the lepidoptera. A hawk-moth, a firefly, or a june- 
bug would now be almost as much out of season as 
a snowball or an apple blossom. In the little pools 
of the borrowpits along the railroad half-grown 
tadpoles hide under the weed roots, and gyratidse 
dart about with many sudden changes of course. 
Once in a while one of these impulsive creatures 
when disturbed will shoot to the bottom of the 
pool, plunge its head into the mud and wait there, 
apparently in fear, like a child with its head under 
the pillow in a thunderstorm. Grasshoppers and 
locusts are numerous ; and the shrill voices of the 
crickets rise on every side. With a little patience 
one can approach very near a singing cricket and 
watch his method of procedure. When your eyes 
are less than a foot from his wing-fiddle, there is 
something amusing in the way he lifts his upper 
wings, making an acute angle like that of a house- 
roof, and moves them out and over the edges of 
the inner wings. There is something in the pro- 
cess that suggests a rehearsal rather than a full 
public performance.^^ 

Goldfinches, mainly in dark winter plumage, are 

15 See Appendix, Note 12. 



84 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

now busy feeding on weed seeds along the roads. 
We saw one flock of about twenty-five and lesser 
groups, welcoming tlie familiar ''I've cheated ye/' 
''I've cheated ye." One flock of six bluebirds 
seemed to linger about a particular fence post as 
if loath to leave it. When we approached quite 
near them, four birds, perhaps the young, flew off. 
Finally the other two left the perch, but one of 
them rose and sank in graceful lines not far away, 
soon returning to a telegraph wire just above the 
post. In the post we found the nest — a perpendic- 
ular hole in the top about three inches mde and ten 
deep. This ' ' old home ' ' did not seem to merit so 
much affection as the birds apparently felt for it. 
The bluebirds are not always in melancholy mood 
at this time of year ; one day we saw one chasing 
another in lively playful manner, and on sunny 
days they sometimes sing with somewhat of the 
spring fervor. The horned larks are in the fields, 
in flocks, tsipping and flitting from the ground as 
one approaches, but we heard no sky song. The 
killdeer was still here on the third, and juncos and 
white-throated sparrows were in town in flocks 
when the month opened. The sparrows sang a 
little, which seems a rather rare favor in their au- 
tumnal visits here. Today we heard a robin. The 
solitary robins lingering into late October or into 
November are very different birds from the first- 



OCTOBER 85 

comers of some suiiiiy, thawing day of early March 
or late February. 

The goldenrod now in bloom seems all of one 
species — a tall-stemmed one. The red clover is 
in bloom everywhere though nowhere in summer 
profusion. White clover, dandelions, yellow wood- 
sorrel, and shepherd's purse are among the few 
familiar plants now in bloom. Coming home across 
the open rolling fields we gathered quite a bouquet 
of violets, looking carefully for them in the gath- 
ering dusk and picking them with chilling fingers. 
These were of the kind the boys call *'bird's-foot,'^ 
with parted leaves very unlike the rounded leaves 
of the ''wood violet," and usually with blossoms 
of much lighter color than those of that species.^® 
The blossoming plants we found in the fields this 
month had exceedingly small leaves and short 
stems. A long, hot summer followed by heavy 
rains, without heavy frost, may account for this 
October bloom. Two years ago both the field vio- 
lets and the wood violets were in bloom in this 
month. As for the robins so for the violets, the 
rather rare autumn blossoms, seen the same day 
with goldenrod, make a very different appeal from 
the May flowers, sharing attention with straw- 
berry blossoms, puccoon, false indigo, and butter- 
cups." 



16 See Appendix, Note 13. 

17 See Appendix, Note 22. 



86 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Cedar Falls, October 31, 1891. 

The first half of the month brought a few pleas- 
ant days, mth sunsets of more or less autumnal 
beauty, but many days were cold and rainy. Most 
of the insect voices passed with September, and 
the orchestral music of the birds dwindled to 
feeble passages on a few minor instruments. For 
a period, one heard almost daily the practical 
notes of the nuthatch; the robin chirped a little 
now and then ; once the song of a meadowlark came 
in at open windows, as full and clear as in spring. 
The bluebirds lingered to the middle of the month 
— long enough to greet the returning snowbirds, 
who flitted in wayside bushes, showing white feath- 
ers prophetic of winter landscapes. Grapes from 
the abundantly provided vines of our host were 
among the delicacies of the season. The bloom of 
red clover mth the contrasting gold of corn and 
pumpkins gave almost the only rich coloring in 
the world of herbs. By the tenth, the leaves were 
falling in considerable numbers along the streets, 
but there was yet no brilliance of foliage. 

Suddenly, it seemed, about the middle of the 
month, the hard maples began to show golden 
tints, and in a few days were in all their glory. 
Coming home from church on the eighteenth we 
passed through a kind of arcade or cloister fash- 
ioned by maples with low-hanging branches. There 
was then full sunli2:ht and one seemed to be ad- 



OCTOBER 87 

mitted into some sanctuary of sylvan deities, 
bathed in an entrancing, weird, mystic light. 
There were, however, some places along the walks 
where maple fruit lay so thickly that it was almost 
impossible to pass without shpping. As the days 
passed, faster and faster fell the general foliage 
over lawns, walks, and parkings. Bonfires gleamed 
brightly at twihght. The children soon had ample 
materials for the many games they enjoy with fal- 
len leaves — house-making in which ground plans 
are sufficient, without walls or roof; fox and geese 
in the wheel with many a leafy spoke. 

On the seventeenth the air seemed full of small 
brownish beetles often seen at this time of year. 
On the twenty-fifth, after wintry days when a 
heavy overcoat was needed and tennis playing in 
low shoes was sacrifice to the god of grit, summer 
temperature returned — for a day. The grackle 
flocks have not been noted now for a week or more. 
Today a blustering cold mnd is blowing the dust 
through the smallest cracks and whirling the fallen 
leaves into fantastic heaps. The hard maples 
show only bare branches. Scarcely a bird note 
can be heard, and even the jays seem to skulk 
about the gardens as if forlorn or ashamed to re- 
main when so many fellow birds have departed 
for the winter. Tomorrow comes November. 



88 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Sioux City, circa October 5, 1893. 

The group of commonwealths either traversed 
or bound by the Missouri River includes seven 
states; the group bearing similar relations to the 
Mississippi includes ten states. The unique rela- 
tions to one or both of the great streams of Mon- 
tana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Louisiana are fa- 
miliar to everybody, or can be seen at a glance on 
the map. Missouri and Iowa, again, are the only 
states among the fifteen which in a geographical 
sense may be said to possess both rivers. 

A certain kind of half humorous, half serious 
discussion of the comparative greatness of the 
two rivers — begun how long ago ? — enters into 
popular conversation from time to time. Look- 
ing north and slightly east from this town one can 
see in imagination the sources of the Mississippi, 
some three hundred and fifty miles away, in a re- 
gion of prairie lakes and w^oods. The river re- 
mains essentially a prairie stream from its source 
to its meeting with the great tributary if not clear 
to the sea. Considered locally its channel is an al- 
most continuous series of curves, but conceived in 
a large way with reference to the geography of the 
entire United States, its course for so long a river 
is in a remarkably direct line. The sources of the 
Missouri are nearly or quite a thousand miles from 
these bluffs by which one wanders today. It rises 
in a mountain region, absorbs the waters of many 




A Cave Dweller on the Missouri 



OCTOBER 91 

British tributaries and its general course is 
marked by four conspicuous changes of direction. 
For many hundred miles of its upper course it is 
a river of plateau and plain rather than of prairie 
proper. Its famiUar nickname, "Big Muddy," is 
to a certain extent appropriate, but one ought not 
to forget that its current carries along with loam 
and clay washed from thousands of miles of 
crumbling banks, waters that rushed from foothill 
springs and mountain cascades. 

Placid as the river is today, and commonplace 
as one may consider the Nebraska cornfields on its 
western border, only a bold imagination would at- 
tempt to summarize its poetic interest, past and 
present, martial and industrial, geological, bio- 
logical, and human. Some ten or twelve years ago 
a friend descended the river by steamer from Fort 
Buf ord to Bismarck — or perhaps lower. On a re- 
cently preceding trip the steamer's progress had 
been interrupted by a large herd of buffalo swim- 
ming across its path. Three years ago several 
wagonloads of refugees came hurrying into a Da- 
kota town on the Jim, fleeing from the terrible 
Sitting Bull, who was on the warpath "beyond the 
Missouri." 

There are noble hill sites here for private resi- 
dences and public buildings. Between the hills 
picturesque ravines wind down toward the valley, 
with bruised slopes that give evidence of heavy 



92 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

freshets. Standing on a bridge across one of these 
ravines, gazing down into woody gloom, one was 
told by a passer-by that a murder had been com- 
mitted there the night before. It seemed a place 
that might well be chosen after darkness fell for 
deeds of crime, or better for romance, of no mean 
order. Perhaps drink bore no relation to this par- 
ticular murder, but today one can count at least 
fifteen places along Fourth Street where liquor is 
openly sold. Though the fact gives no true index 
to life here, some Iowa citizens probably think of 
Sioux City chiefly with reference to its corn-pal- 
aces, its Indian name — and the Haddock murder. 
Late this afternoon a wagon drawn by small, 
scraggy horses — perhaps they should be termed 
ponies — passed slowly along one of the principal 
business streets. On the driver's seat was a benev- 
olent looking old Indian, in cap and other some- 
what dilapidated paleface clothing, and wearing 
eye glasses. In the bottom of the wagon squatted 
two Indian women, one with a small child, the 
women appearing in dress and manner much less 
happily adjusted to civilization than the driver. 
The equipage disappeared, the ponies still moving 
at a slow w^alk, into the hill country back of the 
city. Not much in this quiet incident suggested 
Sitting Bull, the Spirit Lake Massacre, or any 
event or prophecy of terror symbolized by the 
word ^' Sioux." 



OCTOBER 93 

Grinnell, October 27, 1902. 

The fickleness of April is proverbial. Looking 
over local October records for the past few years, 
one is forced to admit also the changeable temper 
of this month in our region. The truth seems to 
be that each month has a comparatively small 
number of constants and a large number of vari- 
ants. The weather is probably less determinate 
than the processes of bird and plant life, vary as 
these do to some extent from year to 3'ear, and de- 
pendent in part as they are on the weather. Pope 
criticized Spenser for attempting, in The Shep- 
herd's Calendar, to individualize each of the 
twelve months ; the Augustan boy poet resting con- 
tent with the four seasons in his Pastorals. Pos- 
sibly Pope was right, for English conditions; at 
least when one reads the October of the Calendar, 
one finds absolutely nothing that gives distinctive 
character to the month. 

Last 3^ear and this, October has given oppor- 
tunity for much pleasant outdoor life — rambles 
across fields, campfires by hedges, wheel rides over 
hard, smooth roads, drives to richly colored woods. 
From such excursions one brings back golden 
brown oak branches, a pocket full of hazel-nuts — 
the nuts of less certain quality than the burs — , 
perhaps large scarlet haws from some woodland 
thorn tree, or chains of bittersweet from hedge- 
row or thicket. The sharp, stout spines of some of 



94 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

the thorns are in their way ahnost as beantiful as 
the fruit. The ^'climbing bittersweet," also known, 
according to Gray's Manual, as ''waxwork," has 
this interest, rather unusual for our more familiar 
plants — there are only four species of its family 
in the United States. The Manual does not often 
abandon scientific description to indulge in literary 
comment, but it has this to say of Celastrus scan- 
dens: ''The opening orange-colored pods, dis- 
playing the scarlet covering of the seeds, are very 
ornamental in autumn." More ornamental, some 
may think, when seen in crisp October air dec- 
orating some roadside shrub or forest tree, than 
on the parlor mantel or over the living-room pic- 
ture. While many delight in the fruit of this 
species, probably few know its June blossoms; 
just as many rejoice in the blossoms of asters and 
goldenrods who give little attention to their fruit. 
The Manual gives no habitat for the species, but it 
must have a wide range east and west. It is found 
in New England, and may be gathered late in Oc- 
tober along the banks of the Solomon, in western 
Kansas. Along with wild roses, some of the 
thorns,^^ mountain ash, and "buckbush," it is 
among the plants best known for their red or yel- 
lowish autumn fruit. 

On these October rambles if one does not admire 
such treasures, one may watch the cottontails 

18 See Appendix, Note 14. 



OCTOBER 95 

leaping- along- the road, listen to the spring-like 
calls of the bob-whites, or, early in the month, 
stroll into some friendly farmer's yard for a feast 
of watermelons or of grapes now full sweet and 
purple tinted — of the good fruit, the last seems 
the best. One may enjoy the scarlet ivy foliage 
and the red-golden tints developing on the hard 
maples. Last year some hazelnuts brought home 
one day were spread out on a level area of roof to 
dry in sun and air. The village squirrels discov- 
ered them in surprisingly short time, and made 
spirited and frequent predatory excursions to the 
store. The antics of the squirrels were worth far 
more than the nuts. Search in the right place and 
one may find violets, as in the years of auld lang 
syne. Two years ago they were in bloom in this 
vicinity on October twenty-ninth. Opportunity 
for a walk might surely have given a November 
record. 

But not all October days are favorable to coun- 
try expeditions, if one demands stimulating air, 
tinted sunsets, or dry roads for feet or wheels. 
There come days even near the close of the month 
not merely of rain or threatening clouds, but of 
warm, heavy atmosphere, wilting, languorous. On 
the seventeenth this year after a fine morning a 
heavy thunderstorm passed over in the late after- 
noon and evening. It was so dark at four o'clock 
that the electric liorhts were needed. October is 



96 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

not infrequently the season of first snow fall, 
though this is sometimes recorded, for poetic pur- 
poses, when amounting to little more than a few 
flying flakes. An interesting snowstorm occurred 
here on the twenty-fifth of the month in 1898. One 
awoke to look out on a white world, and snow fell 
more or less all day, driven by fairly strong winds. 
Surprised citizens trudged along the sidewalks 
carr}dng new snow shovels. Many branches of 
trees were bent till they touched the ground, large 
limbs were broken off by the weight of the snow, 
and there were many other wintry effects not often 
seen in October. 

There are many fine moonlit evenings during 
the month, favorable to strolling lovers, boys play- 
ing shouting games of search, campfires gleaming 
cozily by mid-field hedges. Hallowe'en is often a 
festival when outdoor sorceries are as natural and 
as thrilling as those indoors with sheeted ghosts, 
candles in hollowed pumpkins, nuts, apples, and 
cider, festoons of bittersweet, scarlet branches of 
oaks and maples. The heavens in October declare 
their glory not merely by flooding moonlight, 
sparkling stars, and meteors, but now and then 
in rarer form not peculiar to the season. This year 
near the middle of the month there was a total 
eclipse of the moon; many years ago a brilliant 
comet, visible at four or five o'clock in the morn- 



OCTOBER 97 

ing-, flamed in the eastern skies during the latter 
half of the month and into November. 

Alb la to Neiv Sharon, October 20, 1906. 
At seven o'clock the low morning snn was shin- 
ing beyond pastures and meadows. The strong 
light defined sharply the beaded heads of the tall 
wild sunflowers, the scattered clumps of milkweed 
stalks, gave almost summery greenness to the 
great mullein leaves, stained with rich mahogany 
the weed masses in the swamp, and silvered the 
milkweed pods with their exposed tangles of silk. 
The dry herbs and shrubs are not without interest 
at this time of year in lieu of blossoming plants. 
The high sentinel mulleins, in great variety of 
form, the traceries of aster and goldenrod stems, 
the unlighted candelabra of the vervain, the min- 
iature forests of the buckbushes, are carved into 
sculpturesque relief by clear air and favoring sun. 
Neither are autumn colors missing today. Al- 
though the osage hedges are dark and the box- 
elders nearly bare, the small willows along the 
streams are partly yellowish green, partly in clear 
lemon yellow, partly in bright green. For many 
miles our route is flanked by low, rounded hills, 
intersected by small ravines, and now the summits 
and slopes are quite brilliant with the fine russet 
and bronze tints of the scrub oak copses. These 
oaks also still show some green or yellowish green. 



98 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Here and there is a bit of riclily scarlet sumac. 
Through one field of yellow-brown corn a highway 
bridge gleams in conspicuous white. The cabbage 
fields, though unpoetic perhaps, show rows of 
vivid almost startling green, against a background 
of predominant brown. The right-of-way, recently 
burned off, runs for miles and miles on both sides 
of the track in charred brown-black ribbons, em- 
bossed with hummocks of soil and root clumps. 

In some of the wide cornfields are harvesting 
teams, the horses nibbling the standing corn while 
the farmer hurls the gathered ears with a dull thud 
against the high -boarded side of the wagon; in 
others the cattle are breakfasting, stretching out 
their heads to reach an ear, and twisting their 
necks to wrench it from the stalk. In the corn- 
fields, too, are small flocks of meadowlarks, active 
but songless. One catches an occasional gleam 
from the white tail feathers of a bird just rising or 
alighting. There are scattered pumpkins in the 
fields and a great heap of them at the corner of 
one field. Many gossamer threads float over the 
barb wire fences ; a large hawk sails slowly above 
the woods and a large, loose flock of crows is pass- 
ing leisurely. ^^As the crow flies" indicates a 
brief line of direction, but by no means a modern 
rate of speed. Old birdsnests are now exposed in 
hedge, bush, and tree. It has been dry, roads are 
somewhat dusty, and one sees few recently 



OCTOBER 99 

ploughed fields; the dull black surfaces of dry 
marshes must serve as substitutes for newly 
turned furrows. Here too are black railroad em- 
bankments in which coal slack has been extensively 
used. These banks and the arrival at " Coalfield '^ 
remind the traveler that he is passing near a con- 
siderable area of coal mining ; but this carload of 
freshly cut cordwood, and the dark masses of fair- 
ly heavy timber whence it came, are perhaps of 
more poetic suggestion than the mineral fuel. The 
streams are all open and flowing, though with little 
water. Streams and ponds are littered with fallen 
foliage and in one village several children are out 
early raking yard and parking and burning the 
dead leaves. 

Other men in days gone by have traveled to and 
from this section by more primitive methods of 
transportation than a railway train. We pass 
through Eddyville. Here Ezra Meeker arrived by 
team from Burlington in the fall of 1851 ; here he 
spent part of the bitterly cold winter that followed, 
and from here he set out in April, 1852, to cross 
the plains and mountains to Oregon, with ox team 
and prairie schooner. From Oskaloosa, William 
Edmundson started for California, in 1850, keep- 
ing a diary of the journey, not yet printed. The 
ox team was not a rarity in our boyhood days at 
Grinnell. The town boys sometimes played at 
driving oxen, part of the charm consisting of those 



100 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

magic shouted words, ^ ' Gee — Haw, Buck. ' ' This 
past September one could see the ox teams slowly 
wending their way toward Swift Current from the 
Mennonite Reserve seventeen miles away, and 
teams of four oxen disking in the unfenced fields. 
One was told that it was with these faithful crea- 
tures that some of the settlers along the Saskatch- 
ewan came to market, making the one hundred 
miles and more in about eight days. The ox like 
the crow is no symbol of mechanical speed, but 
rather of the slow, patient processes that alone can 
conquer the desert and forest for the needs of 
man. 

Bes Moines, October 21, 1906. 
Last night the atmosphere was sultry and there 
were considerable flashes of lightning in the dis- 
tance. This morning a few sprinkles of rain fell, 
promise perhaps that the period of drouth may 
soon end. The rivers are very low. The channel 
of the Coon shows mainly an exposed bed of silt, 
and over the Locust Street dam of the Des Moines 
the shallow water passes at one side leaving the 
other side dry. A number of fishermen were try- 
ing their luck in this neighborhood, some angling 
from the dam itself, some from the shores, while 
a negro in a dark flat-bottomed boat was pulling 
in a row of lines attached to a swaying cable fixed 
to the bank at one end. Fishermen in a fair-sized 
town are in a way even more picturesque than 



OCTOBER 101 

those wading' in rapid streams in mountain for- 
ests, where the roaring of cataracts is heard in- 
stead of the rumble and clang of street traffic. 
Some of the fishermen along the docks of the Chi- 
cago parks are romantic figures, and their occa- 
sional camp-fires on the sands near some aristo- 
cratic hotel bring a strange sense of wildness into 
the artificiality of the great metropolis. To the 
layman this present season is not commonly asso- 
ciated with the sport or labor of fishing. He thinks 
more habitually of early spring expeditions, long 
summer days by river or by lake lily-beds, perhaps 
of lines or spears searching beneath December ice. 
A friend wrote from Clear Lake on the fifth of this 
month : ' ' Great numbers of fish are caught daily, 
mostly perch. We caught a large number this 
morning and sixty-two this afternoon, including 
two small pickerel. ' ' 

Along the trolley path to the Fort now^ are bare 
vineyards, the dull scarlet of raspberry bushes, 
and loose heaps of freshly cut kaffir corn. This 
grain and alfalfa are among the comparatively new 
arrivals in our state. In this central section in 
days long past, there were great fields of wheat, 
lye, and barley — many more than one is likely to 
find today. The town lad often tried his hand, to 
the amusement of his country cousin, at weaving 
straw bands and binding the w^heat into bundles, 
on some liot summer day — processes wdiich in 



102 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

these days of machinery seem ahnost as antiquated 
as making tallow candles or riding a high bicycle. 

At the Fort the large plaza is still in rich green, 
with red clover in scattered bloom, crickets making 
low music, and horned larks warbling short sub- 
dued strains from their concealed shelter in the 
grass. As we strolled across this open parade 
ground about half -past five, we heard the bugles 
antiphonal across the half-mile or so of space; 
then came the deep roar and the wandering smoke 
of the sunset gun, the flag fell sliding from its tall 
staff — and officially the day was done. A little 
later, electric lights suddenly gleamed around the 
quadrangle and the moon rose beyond the bar- 
racks. Little groups of soldiers were walking 
about, or sitting on the piazzas of the grim rect- 
angular military homes ; but the scene as a whole 
produced a sense not merely of Sunday quiet, but 
of temporary desertion. Few horses were to be 
seen in the stable yards. Many of the troops had 
recently left for Cuba, and it is said a great crowd 
gathered in the city streets to see them off, for the 
movement of considerable bodies of regulars is 
still something of a novelty in the capital of this 
peaceful agricultural state. 

The hardy little wood-sorrel is one of a very few 
herbs still in bloom here. In the street cars one 
sees groups of young women returning from parks 
or country carrying richly tinted oak branches. 



OCTOBER 103 

Tliere are oiiougli bare trees along" the river banks 
to give a sombre November effect. While October 
is known as tlie niontli of finest autmnn foliage, 
for a complete snrv(\y September and November 
must be included. In Kansas, in some seasons, 
the colorini;- is very beautirul till tlie middle' of No- 
vember, and some striking and characteristic ef- 
fects may wait till that month. Miss Cooper gives 
only the following note for November, dated on 
the third: '^The woods are not absolutely bare, 
however, there are yet patches iu the forest where 
the warm coloring of October has darkened into a 
reddish brown; and here and there a tree still 
throws a fuller shadow than belongs to winter.'* 
The region of which she writes is nearly in the 
latitude of central Iowa, and many kinds of tree 
which she mentions (though she rarely gives the 
exact species) are found in Iowa. All know the be- 
ginning and end of the process from summer 
greenness to winter bareness; but few have the 
patience or leisure to follow the stages in much de- 
tail. One might, if life were spacious enough for 
such pursuits, note each kind of tree, each favorite 
individual, year after year. Within the field of 
ordinary observation few better opportunities to 
revise and extend our color vocal)ulary are found 
than those afforded by autumn foliage. Miss Coop- 
er's color terms are interesting. Such apparent 
inconsistencies as are found are probably readily 



104 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

explained by variations of locality and nature's 
caprice in the chronology of color development at 
this season/^ 

Grinnell, October 22, 1906. 
Walking through the sleeping town a little past 
midnight, one heard from the tree-tops low, elusive 
bird notes, apparently of sparrow quality. Very 
possibly they came from white-throated sparrows, 
which were very numerous here a few days ago. 
These delicate nocturnal calls of migratory birds 
in the autumn, heard from the branches or often 
from wanderers in misty weather above the elec- 
tric lights, have a strange fascination — that of 
the unknown, the transitory, the intangible. Night 
songs may be heard from various species in sum- 
mer, but these dim call notes of passing travelers 
make a different appeal. Quite different in effect 
also were the bluebird's warble coming in at the 
window this morning, before one arose, the later 
prosaic labor-song of the nuthatch, and the loud, 
resolute if melancholy cry of the flicker borne 
along the afternoon wind. The myrtle warblers 
and the kinglets have been abundant here of late, 
but we saw none today. The autumnal migration 
of the warblers, partly because of the confusing 
condition of plumage in adults and young, is a 
branch of bird-lore in which the mere amateur is 
seldom proficient. 

1" See xA.ppendix, Note 15. 



OCTOBER 105 

In the afternoon, it was '^ November-like," witli 
clouded skies and a chilling wind from the north. 
The back-yard is littered with fallen leaves, and 
dead, damp foliage occupies the catbird's nest in 
the barberry hedge. The scarlet barberries are 
shriveling, though some decorated the table in the 
dining-room today. The asparagus bed is mostly 
of rich yellow color, mixed with some green, the 
effect being like that of tidal shore waters carry- 
ing yellowish masses of weeds and touched by sun- 
light and wind. The cherry and apple trees are 
still in fairly full, quite green foliage, one hard 
maple tree is bare at the top with scattered areas 
of leaves on the lower limbs, while the poplar and 
the box-elder are nearly bare, and the ash fruit 
clings to a leafless tree. 

Hereafter follows a paragraph or two of senti- 
ment, if not of sentimentality. Let the reader 
who will, look and pass. Low in the garden shelter 
— of current bushes, barberries, and the grape ar- 
bor — a solitary mockingbird lurked today, silent, 
A\dth huddled form, as if cold, or frightened, or 
lost or lonely. This is a rare visitor to central 
Iowa, and seemed especially alien on such a chilly 
day. We have a very dim memory of a visit of 
this southern singer to another back-yard of this 
town, many years ago ; but we never knew and 
never will know wdiether the memory rested on 
fact. It is even possible that the supposed stranger 



106 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

was only a catbird, shameful as that confession 
may be. But — while to the scientist nothing is 
so vexatious as uncertainty, to the sentimentalist 
there is charm not only in the first discovery, in the 
personal rarity that may be a neighbor 's common- 
place, but even in the uncertainties, the forever 
elusive. "What poetry of the failing quest in the 
story of the woman from New England who sought 
here for years, with her revered eastern botany as 
guide, to identify the waterleaf blooming yearly 
under the wild plum thicket in her yard — who 
died, perhaps, with the secret still unknown. There 
is delight now in remembering those years when 
flocks of Harris sparrows whistled along the osage 
hedges in plain sight — yet were not so much as 
named in any of the bird books at our command. 
The first scarlet tanager, lying dead in a college 
student's hand in the Sugar Creek woods, had a 
little richer color than any tanager we have seen 
since. The ^^wood robin" pointed out by a neigh- 
bor one summer evening in our front-yard cotton- 
wood, was more of a thrush than any later ac- 
quaintance of his kind; and the first Baltimore or- 
iole whose nest we saw hanging from a branch of 
that same tree — have any other orioles had quite 
the same penetrating, thrilling voice, and brilliance 
of contrasting orange and black? The first dis- 
covered American bittern, heard afar booming 
across solitary meadows as spring dusk deepened 



OCTOBER 107 

into darkness, remains individualized among all 
birds. That summer tanager we saw or dreamed 
we saw, once and once only, has become poetic, a 
romantic myth, a disembodied spirit we would not 
wish to clothe in flesh and feathers. Birds of the 
Orchard, Birds of the Seashore, and Birds of My 
Boyhood — and yours, whose heart has not yet 
been entirely silenced by hours in laboratory, 
classroom, library, or office. The showy orchis, 
also, found but once in the familiar woodland, and 
never seen since anywhere, living or dead! Let 
some few such memories remain — haunting, frag- 
mentary memories never to be rebuked, and never 
to pass into the clear daylight of science. 

The mockingbird, however, is no mere dream in 
the annals of American nature-lore. As early as 
1690, in spite of the fact that the nightingale and 
skylark continued to be favorite birds with Amer- 
ican poets, a schoolmaster of Pennsylvania wrote 
— the bird itself a polyglot, why not in Latin? — 

Hie avis est quaedam dulci celeberrima voce 
Quae variare sonos usque canendo solet. 

The ringing hexameters of Evangeline must be 
familiar to many who never heard the bird : 

Then from a neighboring thicket the mockingbird, wild- 
est of singers, 

S\nnging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the 
water, 



108 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, 
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed 
silent to listen. 

For twenty years or more Maurice Thompson 
made a special study of this song-leader among 
American birds, in its southern haunts, and in the 
extensive literature that had been devoted to it. 

In the fields one can see mounds of fresh, soft, 
dark earth cast up by the still busy little moles. 
Along the country roads north of town, the crickets 
still sing in feeble voice, and a few purple asters 
bloom yet among the grasses. The familiar snow- 
birds dash about the shrubbery. Men with teams 
were gathering corn, and the golfers lingered in 
the pasture course as the darkness was falling. 
The sunset was of short duration, but showed the 
crimson coloring befitting the season. 

Laivrence, Kansas, October 31, 1906. 
A Grinnell newspaper reports that for ten days 
or so men have been hunting mud turtles along 
the nearby sloughs and creeks, for the city mar- 
kets of the east. About seven hundred and fifty 
pounds have been taken from Poweshiek County 
streams, the average weight being five or six 
pounds, and the maximum (so far as reported) 
about thirteen. One would hardly consider the 
prairie wolf or the woodchuck '^game" in the or- 
dinary sense ; these turtles might perhaps be add- 



OCTOBER 109 

ed to the very brief list of in^esent day wild game 
creatures in the state. 

In the Annals of loiva for January, 1905, Pro- 
fessor Herbert Osborn has an interesting article 
on Recently Extinct and Vanishing Animals of 
Iowa.-'' Looking back over the years it may be 
surprising if not shameful to recall how few wild 
creatures, omitting insects, birds, snakes, and fish- 
es, some of us have known in our home state. Of 
course something depends on the sections with 
wdiich one is familiar, something on opportunity 
to be in the wilder regions of timber, prairie, and 
water, by day and night, in season and out of sea- 
son. Of quadrupeds other than those mentioned 
in Professor Osborn 's article, the writer's Iowa 
acquaintance is limited to humble, well-known 
species — the cottontail, the woodchuck, the skunk, 
field mice, squirrels, moles, muskrats, etc. In oth- 
er groups among animals more or less familiar 
have been turtles, snails, mussels, crayfish, bats — 
and that curious creature known to boys as the 
*'mud puppy." 

Of the rodents, the gray squirrels have of course 
become familiar in late years in our parks and 
resident streets, with the red squirrels apparently 
less numerous or less widely distributed. To some 
observers the flying squirrel is probably quite a 
rarity. The writer has only once witnessed its 

20 See Appendix, Note 16. 



110 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

real ''flight." The ''ground squirrel" or "strip- 
ed gopher" of common speech was formerly abun- 
dant on the campus at GrinnelL and constantly 
tempting the town boys into processes of snaring 
and "drowning out." Its alert erect form, its 
whistle, its scamper homeward through the grass, 
and its head emerging from the hole, were long too 
familiar to command much notice from adults. In 
the fields about Grinnell one occasionally sees an- 
other species of "ground squirrel" — quite a 
frisky, handsome creature, of fair size, reddish 
fur, and bushy, grayish tail. 

Field mice are associated with nests of fine 
grass, tiny tracks across the snow, and silent 
forms pendent from the barb mre or osage thorn 
larders of the butcher-birds. The conspicuously 
arched underground paths of the pocket gophers 
about the yard and in the fields, were of deep in- 
terest every year in bo^^hood, when nature lore 
first made its appeal. The earth mounds of the 
moles were much more frequently seen than the 
diggers themselves, though occasionally a scurry- 
ing mole appeared — a being though so small, so 
peculiar and foreign to daily life that it gave one a 
curiously profound sense of the mystery and 
strangeness of nature. Muskrat houses are known 
probably to most Iowa boys in regions of quiet 
waters, and the swimming muskrat is one of the 
cherished early signs of spring. 



OCTOBER 111 

In lieu of larger game, old-i'asliiuned boys — - 
perhaps those of today are like thereunto — were 
content at times to ferret out crawfish — ' ' cray- 
fish" — from their cylindrical, cavernous retreats 
in muddy banks; and to some of the more sensi- 
tive boys the frequent sight of crawfish corpses or 
of the detached claws may have given hints of the 
tragic struggle for existence. 

Charles Aldrich, in his picturesque account of 
The Old Prairie Slough, describes the grayish- 
white belts or other geometric designs about the 
dried ponds and lake-beds, fashioned by thousands 
of lifeless shells. Such exposed signs of life that 
passed away before the plough came hitherward 
give one a sense of the vastness of nature's plan. 
Other records of life in remote periods the Iowa 
boy read, after his boyish fashion, in the trilobites 
of his geological excursion, and in the bones of the 
mastodon that digging workmen uncovered in 
^'our village." 

To return a moment to the point of our depart- 
ure. Many a Hawkeye lad — or lassie — has 
doubtless had as temporary pet some individual 
of some species of turtle ; but it takes patience and 
a degree of skill to break records in most fields 
of human activity. Who between the Mississippi 
and the Missouri can truthfully relate a tale of tur- 
tles equal to that so modestly told in The Natural 
History of Selhornel That "old Sussex tortoise" 



112 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

is possibly still the most famous of his tribe, at 
least so far as long abiding with man is concerned. 
Before Gilbert White took it into his personal 
keeping, it had been ''at home" for thirty years 
with a single family in a seaside county. 

Lawrence, Kansas, October 28, 1913. 

The twenty-fifth here was a typical golden Octo- 
ber day, with summery temperature, bugs flying, 
and a monarch butterfly fluttering on a dandelion 
blossom; though the skies clouded early in the 
evening and a wild goose wandering above the 
electric lights cackled in prophecy of change. The 
next day enough snow fell to robe lawns and roofs, 
but it soon passed into rain. Some hours before 
noon today flurries of heavy damp snow began to 
fall. A little later sleet came pattering on the 
windows and heaping up on the roofs ; then snow 
again, which fell nearly all the afternoon, driven 
before a cold north wind, covering lawns and 
streets, resting on the heavy green foliage of the 
pear trees, stripping the final foliage from the 
ashes, and making a strange background for the 
golden elms and hard maples. 

From many other parts of the country early 
snows have been reported. On the fourteenth in 
Plymouth County, Massachusetts, snow fell on the 
unharvested cranberry bogs, destrojdng, growers 
estimated, fiftv thousand barrels of the berries. 



OCTOBER 113 

About the tweiitieth Davoii[)oi't and Dubuque ex- 
perienced snow, and it lay over the woods and 
rocks in the Ozark region of Missouri, while freez- 
ing weather ranged from the Texas Panhandle 
to Atlanta. 

A Grinnell record made some thirty years ago 
today reads: ^'Some houses are already banked.'* 
The banking of houses was at that time a labor, 
one might almost say an art, familiar to many a 
village lad. It ranked with the making of soft 
soap, tallow candles, twisting paper tapers, gath- 
ering thoroughwort, curing hams, selecting sweet 
corn to dry, melting snow for soft water, mulch- 
ing grapevines, trimming raspberry bushes, as an 
occupation classified as 'Svork," but not without 
possible characteristics of a sport, if rightly man- 
aged. The process of laying and finishing off 
thirty or forty yards of banking might last several 
boys working at intervals after school, for a num- 
ber of days. The tools and the materials were 
simple, almost as primitive as the purpose — to 
shut out the winter cold. Spades, spading forks, 
shovels, pitchforks, rakes, hoes, wheelbarrows 
were the implements; barnyard refuse, in later 
years flax straw, fallen leaves, ^^cMp-dirt," loam 
from the garden and light strips of lumber with 
a few heavier boards, were the materials. The 
labor consisted in '^ assembling" implements and 
materials, in lajdng a solid, well-packed wall of the 



114 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

straw or refuse, in covering it with a thin, even 
layer of earth, and removing the debris — and 
cleaning and storing the tools. Skill consisted in 
making a bank of equal, approved height and slope 
clear around the house, and well-rounded curves at 
the corners — without waste of materials or labor. 
During the season, repairs must often be made. 
We used to watch the snows cover the banks and 
thaw there, water drip on them from icicles along 
the eaves-trough, and the icicles themselves fall 
and break to pieces on the slopes. In the spring 
removal of the entire banking was a rapid process, 
without much poetic interest, except as it remind- 
ed us that erelong the orioles would sing in the 
Cottonwood, and the bees hum among the willow 
catkins. Humble labors, this of banking houses, 
and those others with which we associated it. How 
many of them still continue in these days of Iowa 
millionaires and automobiles "? For some, the mere 
mention of them will always recall the mingled 
hopes and fears of boyhood, semi-pioneer days 
with rough daily tasks and sense of fellowship 
with all who ^^ worked for a living," finding such 
pleasure as was possible in the work itself. 



NOVEMBER 



TO A NOVEMBER VIOLET 

Oil Flower of Spring, that lingered here to cheer 

The briefer daylight of a ling 'ring fall, 
Speak to my darling of another year — 

Of vines that drape an humble cottage wall. 
Of birds that build beneath its slanting eaves 

And swing upon the rose-branch at the door; 
Of hope that bourgeons with the budding leaves 

And Love that waxes more and more. 
(First lines from a poem in Hattie Leonard Wright's 

At the Twilight Hour and Other Poems, Fort Dodge, 

1897) 



(115) 



NOVEMBER 

Grinnell, November 20, 1885. 
It has been a clear, very warm day; pleasant 
weather for a ramble down the valley of Bosworth 
Creek to the woods. From the western hills, in 
this calm, clear air, nnobscured by foliage, the 
town lay exposed in full relief two miles away, 
challenging one to recognize familiar buildings by 
the height of walls, shape and height of tower or 
spire. Extended in a single view, from fringe of 
small houses on the southern outskirts to the col- 
lege buildings on the north, the town seemed to 
assume a new dignity. Small as it is compared 
with a real city, who could imagine all the life 
histories being written in its limits while we gazed 
at it from afar, for the time being mere spectators? 
The prairie country is not always flat. Some 
prairie towns are set on seven hills, more or less ; 
some lie hidden in valleys, and one comes sud- 
denly upon them, surprised to discover them, like 
a medieval knight who reined in his *^ steed'' and 
beheld for the first time the castle-home of his fu- 
ture wife, dimly peering below through the river 
mist. But also characteristic is the straight, fair- 

(IIT) 



118 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

ly level view across the prairies to towns seven, 
ten or more miles away. In Dakota, mirage some- 
times gives one a temporary vision of towns twen- 
ty miles or more away, over the unfeneed, nn- 
ploughed lands. 

In the fields today the red fruit of the wild roses 
made a pleasant contrast to the autumnal browns. 
It would require an artist to distinguish all the 
shades of brown now prominent in the landscape 
— lighter browns, almost yellow, of cornstalks, 
straw stacks and stubble ; darker browns of woods, 
hedges, and many weed masses. A wind-tumbled 
patch of tall, thick meadow grass mingling brown 
with green, resembled waters in sunshine and 
breeze. From the cornfields came the sound of 
stalks crunched by the teams and feeding cattle, 
and the thump of ears against the boarded side of 
the wagons. The dry stalks stand conspicuously 
above the heads of men and horses — these being 
relieved as dark objects in a golden light. The in- 
sect voices are mainly silent, notwithstanding the 
warm Aveather, but a few crickets were chirping 
faintly, and some grasshoppers were lively. A sol- 
itary hawk was sweeping in low, wide circles over 
the fields — perhaps a marsh harrier, perhaps a 
red-tailed hawk. The only other birds noticed 
were crows, chickadees, and several flocks of tree 
sparrows. 

The tree sparrow, or ''winter chippy," is a neat, 



NOVEMBER 119 

trim bird, with reddish crown and a dark breast 
spot; and is one of our most familiar winter spe- 
cies. After the blackbirds leave, ordinarily one 
sees few large flocks of birds except those of this 
sparrow. Though wdien alarmed they often fly 
into the trees, their name is not very applicable to 
their usual habits here in winter. They are most 
frequently seen down in the channel of some 
slough, or along the slope of a hill or even along 
the roads, feeding on the seeds of low w^eeds. 
They often chase one another through the w^eeds 
or shrubbery, singing in slight, broken sparrow 
strains ; their notes reminding one of the tinkling 
of ice-clad w^eed-stalks — a delicate cymbal music. 
When feeding among the matted weeds of a slough, 
they are often quite silent, except for a very dim 
alarm note, and one might pass very near w^ithout 
discovering them. When the flock is aroused, long- 
after the observer supposes them all flown a few 
more mil generally spring up suddenly from their 
cover. They are also often found in the company 
of chickadees along the borders of woods. Their 
notes are richer in the spring, becoming a real 
song, and their April concert is one of the finest 
w^e have. Today we saw one loosely spread flock 
of perhaps one hundred and fifty birds, the outly- 
ing members being hundreds of feet apart. One 
bird flew to the top of a tall, solitary cottonwood in 
mid-field, entirelv bare of foliaa-e but beaded ))v tlie 



120 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

large winter buds. The sparrow remained there 
for three or four minutes, flirting his tail up and 
down, turning face about once or twice, and giving 
the thin, metallic alarm note every few seconds. 
His manner was that of a sentinel. 

A few other birds have been about town or 
country this month. On the tenth, a large flock of 
blackbirds flew noisily over the town. It had been 
so long since we had seen them we supposed them 
gone. On the sixth a robin perched on a small 
branch of a tree in a vacant lot, preening his 
feathers. In a country walk on the ninth, a sol- 
itary gruff-looking shrike appeared on a telegraph 
wire. Last year we saw a similar one in the same 
situation, near the end of November, and from its 
size, shape, and manner thought it must be a great 
northern, though possibly it was only a belated 
loggerhead. Now and then goldfinches dart over, 
in flocks of twenty or thirty, chattering in quite 
lively fasliion. They seem smaller than in sum- 
mer, partly on account of their dull plumage, per- 
haps, or because the background is a bare, wide 
wintry landscape. Snowbirds are here in the usual 
flocks of from twenty to fifty, showing their dark 
plumage, like slaty ice, and flirting white tail 
feathers suggestive of thin lines of snow ; repeat- 
ing their metallic tsips among the garden bushes 
or orchard trees. The firm, undulatory flight of the 
hairy woodpecker is a frequent sight, and his res- 



NOVEMBER 121 

olute, penetrating ijiuip, appropriate to a heroic 
season, is often heard along' the streets. The 
screaming bhie jays are conspicuous, though never 
seen in considerable flocks ; the white-breasted nut- 
hatch is working day by day, grunting as he hibors 
up the maple boles ; and the quiet insect-like brown 
creeper is ''busy as a bee." It is curious to note 
how many times the creeper is seen and heard in 
days of Hght rain or mist. He seems to be in the 
best of spirits on such days. The most character- 
istic real song of the month is the phoebe strain of 
the chickadee. On winter days it is delightful just 
because there are few other birds singing. In 
other seasons it has less charm, though always 
welcome. 

Cedar Falls, November 29, 1891. 
The later part of the month has been of rather 
wintry character. On the eleventh the wind drove 
blustering through bare branches and over bare 
fields lightly robed in new-fallen snow^; at night 
the skies showed the moon and a star or two peer- 
ing through Avind-driven masses of white cloud. A 
few days later came autumn rains, dissolving the 
snow; then the cold returned, the winds whirled 
the chimney smoke to and fro in frosty air, pass- 
ers-by walked briskly over creaking boards and 
wagons rumbled over frozen earth. For days not 
a bird was heard except the discontented jays. 
One needed to be careful of the house plants, re- 



122 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

moving them from the windows at night and 
placing them near the heat registers. Then more 
rain, pattering on the roof, rushing in the eaves- 
trough, bringing thoughts of the stormy seaside, 
deserted of city folks, watched by heroic life-sav- 
ing men with night-long patrol by raging waters ; 
thoughts of the muffled rhythm of whistling buoys 
and the deep bellow of fog horns. A week ago 
came one day of typical November desolation — 
dull, dead; the streets muddy, the air heavy and 
chilly without bracing quality, the sky covered with 
a solid, motionless curtain of dark cloud. Night 
before last the mercury dropped to twelve below ; 
last night to fifteen below. The ground is again 
covered by snow, not thawing though the sunlight 
is brilliant, and still the only birds about town are 
the jays, screaming as if in defiance. 

Weather records are considered dry, but when 
viewed comparatively, over a series of years and 
for different sections, they become almost fascin- 
ating to some minds. John Lems Peyton writing 
of Mississippi Valley days in 1848 notes ''the se- 
verity of the weather of early autumn at St. Paul. '^ 
In later pages he gives some data for Illinois. At 
Springfield, on November seventeenth there were 
eighteen inches of snow, with a temperature of 
five degrees below zero. The next day, mth change 
of wind the mercury rose to thirty-six above, and 
on the nineteenth came a furious nor 'wester, with 



NOVEMBER 123 

inei'cury (lr()p[)ini;- to fil'tiH'ii Ix'low. On November 
twenty-fourth, four years ag'o, in central Kansas, 
after days when one soui^ht the shady places for 
comfort, and after a very mild afternoon, a bliz- 
zard rushed down on us during the nig-ht. Early 
in the evening small birds, perhaps horned larks, 
circled and called pathetically above the town. All 
the next day the snow fell. On the twenty-seventh 
there were four or five inches on the level, with a 
temperature of twenty below. Friends arriving 
after a twenty-two mile drive across the open 
prairie were almost frozen. A year ago yester- 
day we drove for miles across unfenced lands in 
South Dakota, in the brilliant sunlight and mild 
air of a perfect afternoon, to visit the site of an 
ancient battle, in which Indians had a share. The 
earlier snows had passed entirely. The prairie 
swells were clad in brown grasses, sprinkled on 
some slopes by small granite boulders with bits of 
mica shining in the sunlight. Our spades struck 
into earth concealing the hastily buried victims 
of the battle, and uncovered jawbones, femora, 
and fragments of skull — to the bountiful, re- 
morseless sunlight. 

GrinneU, November 26, 1898. 
November in this region has at least two phases 
to which she has accustomed her friends (or ene- 
mies), and she has presented both of them this 



124 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

year — the phase of Indian Summer, and the 
phase of real white man's winter. Early in the 
month and as late as the twentieth, some days have 
been clear and warm, pleasant for tennis or for 
long bicycle rides into the country, with tranquil 
skies, beautiful sunsets, gossamer threads shim- 
mering over the cornfields. Some days have been 
a trifle too warm for the best mental or moral re- 
sults. Four days ago when the snowfall earlier in 
the month was almost forgotten, we awoke to find 
the real winter — cold, sleet, snow, and wind. The 
first sleigh-bells of the season rang along the 
streets, and they are ringing tonight, under beauti- 
ful moonlight. From scanty records and uncer- 
tain memory, it seems probable that long-endur- 
ing snow and ice have been much less frequent in 
the Iowa November, during the past generation or 
so, than rain and sleet. On November twentieth in 
1880, the wild geese were heard honking, through 
a snowstorm that lasted all day, and a few days 
later with two inches of snow on the ground, the 
first snowballing and first sleighing of that winter 
were enjoyed. In 1883, there were sleet storms on 
the twenty-first and twenty-second, and on the 
twenty-fifth, hail, with thunder and lightning — a 
somewhat unusual storm for the season. 

The November notes in Miss Cooper's Rural 
Hours, though not extensive in comparison with 
those of other months, contain some very interest- 



NOVEMBER 125 

iiig- matter. She records but little snow, and many 
pleasant walks throughout the month, a visit from 
golden-crested kinglets, feeding cattle, fall plough- 
ing, green wheat fields, and the fading flowers of 
the year — asters, everlasting and wych-hazel. 
Mosses are also in flower. November, Miss Cooper 
says, ^4s considered one of the best months for 
fishing in our lakes." 

The British November, at least in past centuries, 
seems a month of rain and frost and chilly winds, 
but of infrequent snowfall, if one may judge by 
certain famous literary reports. In The Shep- 
herd's Calendar, Spenser gives very little direct 
description in November. Near the beginning of 
the poem, Colin speaks of ^'tliilke sollein season," 
and the last line of the poem is Thenot's 

Now gynnes to mizzle, hye we homeward fast. 
Evelyn in his Diary gives considerable attention 
to weather data betw^een 1634 and 1706, having 
both the personal interest of an extensive garden- 
er, and the scientific interest befitting so prominent 
a member of the Royal Society. The following 
passages give the reader fairly definite conception 
of November weather for a period of twenty 
years : 

Nov. 2, 1684. ^'A sudden change from temper- 
ate warm weather to an excessive cold rain, frost, 
snow and storm such as seldom been known. This 



126 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

winter weather began as early and fierce as the 
past did late ; till about Christmas there had been 
hardly any winter. ' ' 

Nov. 22, 1685. ''Hitherto was a very wet warm 
season. ' ' 

Dec. 29, 1686. ''Little appearance of any Win- 
ter as yet.'' 

Nov. 18, 1688. "It was now very hard frost." 

Nov. 10, 1689. "After a very wet season, the 
Winter came on severely. ' ' 

Nov. 16, 1690. "Exceedingly great storms, yet 
a warm season." 

Nov. 8-30, 1691. "An extraordinary dry and 
warm season, without frost, and like a new Spring; 
such as had not been known for many years." 

Nov. 12, 1693. "The season continued very 
wet." 

Nov. 8, 1696. "The first frost began fiercely, 
but lasted not long. ' ' 

Nov. 15-23, 1696. "Very stormy weather, rain 
and inundations. ' ' 

Nov. 24, 1699. "A gentle, calm, dry, temperate 
weather all this season of the year, but now comes 
sharp, hard frost, and mist, but calm." 

Nov. 21, 1703. "The wet and uncomfortable 
weather stayed us from church," etc. 

Nov. 26-27, 1703. "The effects of the hurri- 
cane and tempest of mnd, rain, and lightning 
through all the nation, especially London, were 



NOVEMBER 127 

very dismal. Many houses demolished, and people 
killed. . . the damage to my own dwelling, 
farms and outhouses, is almost tragical, not to be 
paralleled with anything happening in our age. I 
am not able to describe it, but submit to the pleas- 
ure of Almighty God." 

One finds so much generalized description, so 
much non-English element, and so little exact dat- 
ing in Thomson's Seasons, that the Autumn can- 
not be compared fairly with our September, Octo- 
ber, and November data. But the season as de- 
scribed by the Scotchman includes the familiar 
items of harvest, nut-gathering, hunting, meteoric 
showers, migrating birds, and fading woods 

Of every hue from wan, declining green 

To sooty dark. 

It is also the season of ripened pears and apples, 
of cider-making, of 

The breath of orchard, big with bending fruit. 
Thomson's description of a snowstorm is reserved 
for Winter, and the chief weather phenomena al- 
lotted to Autumn are ^^dnds, heavy rains, and fogs. 
For The Cotter's Saturday Night, Burns chooses 
a November evening, but makes no mention of 
snow^ 

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sough; 

The short 'ning winter-day is near a close; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh ; 
The black 'ning trains o' craws to their repose. 



128 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, upon which Burns 's 
famous poem is partly modeled, names no partic- 
ular month, but the poet calls upon his muse to 
* ^ chaunt in hamely strain, ' ' 

What bangs fu' leal the e'enin's coming cauld, 
An' gars snaw-tappit Winter freeze in vain. 

In The Natural History of Selhorne the refer- 
ences to individual months are somewhat inci- 
dental. The snows recorded are all or nearly all 
in December or January. On November twenty- 
sixth, 1768, White mentions a martin seen by a 
neighbor busily ^4iawking for flies." Under date 
of April twelfth, 1772, he writes that the preced- 
ing November, the old Sussex tortoise was at work 
from the first to the thirteenth, ^^ forming its hy- 
bernaculum," and as the weather was warm at the 
end of that period the work remained unfinished.^^ 
In 1773 he records that the tortoise ' ' retired under 
ground about the twentieth of November, and 
came out again for one day on the thirtieth. ' ' ^" 
Once he writes of the house martins, ''considerable 
flocks have discovered themselves again in the first 
week of November, and often on the fourth day of 
that month only for one day. ' ' -^ 



21 Letter XIII. 

22 Letter XVII. 

23 Letter XXXVI. 




From a photograph by Cornelia Clarle 

Skunk Kiver at Lynnville 



NOVEMBER 131 

Iowa City, November 28, 1900. 

In the classrooms of the University here, one 
may learn, presumably, not only the history of 
Greece and Rome, the itinerary of Ulysses, the 
site of early London theatres with reference to the 
Thames, and the relations of Guelf and Ghibel- 
line, but also much which lies closer to the student 
in time and place — the government and the ideals, 
the natural and the social history of Iowa. It is 
nearly twenty years since Professor Jesse Macy 
jjuhlished his CivU GovenDnent in loiva, recog- 
nized as a pioneer book in its field by a competent 
scholar. Local government, including careful con- 
sideration of the state constitution, was an im- 
portant subject of study at the State Normal 
School a decade or more ago. Our geological, 
botanical, and zoological treasures of course re- 
ceived scientific attention even before statehood. 

Yet some whose education in this state was not 
chiefly of scientific nature, whose life-work has 
not been concerned with local politics or history, 
must confess to ignorance of many Iowa matters 
they might be supposed to know. Here today, in 
the presence of the old capitol building, dignified, 
presenting a stately front to the street that seems 
made as an approach to it ; in the town named for 
the state, beside the river named for the state ; we 
may realize that while w^e have lived none too much 
in far countries and distant times, we have liardlv 



132 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

begun to live, in a complete sense, in our own 
Iowa. What do we know of this very town, except 
that its domestic architecture seems to show 
strong early southern influence, that it was once 
the capital — and perhaps that it contains a con- 
siderable Bohemian element? Many of us are 
hazy as to the date when Des Moines was made 
the capital, and the date when the University was 
founded is less certain than that of Queen Anne's 
accession. 

The woods environing the town, even in their 
present wintry state, we can admire ; standing on 
the river bluffs certain straight stretches and cer- 
tain curves of the stream are before our eyes, but 
what of the source, the upper course, and the fur- 
ther pathway to the Mississippi? By the chance 
of residence, one may be familiar with the stone 
quarries, the bayous haunted by migratory ducks 
in March or April, the wigwams and blanketed 
forms, in Tama County. Another has heard that 
the scenery along the river near Iowa Falls is of 
unusual beauty for our prairie state. But how 
many could draw a fairly correct line for the 
course of the Iowa from source to mouth; how 
many know that the steamer ^^Kipple" puffed up 
stream clear to this town, back somewhere in the 
forties! Some of those old maps of territorial 
days, from 1839 to 1845 — those of Colton, 
Plumbe, Jesse Wilhams, Newhall, Nicollet and 



NOVEMBER 133 

Barrows — might prove as interesting- as maps of 
Elizabethan Tjoii(U)ii or ancient Rome. 

For the rivers of Iowa some fearless soul should 
make a poetic catalogue, for us the citizens of 
Iowa, as Spenser made one of British rivers for 
the British. He writes '' of 

The chaulky Kenet; and the Thetis gray; 

The morish Cole ; and the soft-sliding Breane ; 

The wanton Lee, that oft doth loose his way ; 
And the still Darent, in whose waters cleane 
Ten thousand fishes play and deck his pleasant stream. 

And of the Severn, Tamar, Plim, Stoure, Wyli- 
bourne, and nearly forty more of the streams of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

Is there no poetry in the names, associations 
and individual character (or is it that we have not 
the ''seeing eye," the venturous pride?) of the 
Yellow, Turkey, Maquoketa, Wapsipinicon, Ce- 
dar, Des Moines, Little Sioux, Rock, Fox, Char- 
iton, Nodaway, Nishnabatona, Floyd, Willow, and 
Blue Earth! Even for the creeks might not there 
be some picturesque contrasts in a comparison of 
the Bear, Timber, Lime, Village, and Broken Ket- 
tle! Unhappy the prairie boy wdio does not know 
some stream to mingle in his earUest memories of 
birds, flowers, fields, and w^oods. For one, the ex- 
periences of the long hilly descent to the valley of 

24 Fairy Qucou TV, 11. 



134 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Bear Creek, the crossing of the wooden bridge that 
seemed a thriUing adventure, dreaded for a mile 
or more of the approach, an occasional glimpse of 
sheep-shearing by the big pool, the swirl of muddy 
current after freshets ; also the lazy summer days 
with the redwings and flopping fish and the small 
willows along Little Bear Creek — are these not 
treasures, not often mentioned, not often remem- 
bered, but altogether good to possess? 

The tragic note is not missing in personal mem- 
ories of the rivers of Iowa, though we have pro- 
duced no Milton to sing famous monodies for those 
who pass in cruel waters. Today, one thinks of 
the two noble sisters, passionate lovers of nature, 
drawn down to sudden death by their beloved Ce- 
dar ; of the two brothers drowned together in the 
Iowa near Marshalltown, and of a brother and 
sister who long ago sank to death near these very 
banks where we are musing. 

GrinneU, November 30, 1901. 
On the third, two inches of snow lay on the 
ground. The eighth was ^^September-like, with 
many dandelions in bloom, and flies, spiders, grass- 
hoppers and a small butterfly observed." It is 
curious to find Gray's Manual giving the period of 
dandelion bloom as only from April to Septem- 
ber.^^ This plant, one is told, was carefully nur- 

23 See Appendix, Note 20. 



NOVEMBER 135 

tiirod in the early days here, as a pleasant re- 
minder of the old homes ^^back east" whence so 
many of the townsfolk came. The ManuaVs ^^ pas- 
tures and fields everyAvhere" certainly gives it a 
wide habitat today; and locally it is considered a 
nnisance, many efforts being made to exterminate 
it. It was originally naturalized from Europe. 
In the course of its history it has had at least three 
specific names — the present colorless officinale^ 
the taraxacum of Karsten, and the much more pic- 
turesque dens-leonis of Desfontaines. The botany 
also names a ''false dandelion" and a "fall dande- 
lion," each of a different genus from our plant; 
neither of them, apparently, being found in our 
state. The uses of the dandelion for ''greens," 
\dne, pastoral pipes, and curls, ought to give it 
some favor with us yet, one would think. 

The insects noted on the eighth are not excep- 
tional for the season, unless the butterfly is such. 
However many butterflies one may have chanced 
to see here in November, one hardly thinks of No- 
vember as a butterfly month. The most common 
insects of late fall and winter in this locality, 
aside from grasshoppers and crickets (of frequent 
occurrence in November, but probably rare in De- 
cember), are most likely the "common caterpil- 
lar" — the black-browmish banded one — and 
angleworms. The black ground beetles might 
come next in order. In central Kansas we noted 



136 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

one November fifteenth, "many small insects are 
ont," and on the corresponding date a few years 
later, at Eedfield, Sontli Dakota, ''ants and bngs 
are stirring.'' According to the files of a local 
newspaper, bugs, flies, and mosquitoes were much 
in evidence at Grinnell in the verj^ mild December 
of 1877. 

Yesterday and today have also been "Septem- 
ber-like. ' ' One often wonders whether the charac- 
ter of the season is changing, or memory playing 
us false when we recall the titanic snowdrifts of 
Thanksgiving time in auld lang syne. Did not 
Thanksgiving tradition, in families of Yankee or- 
igin, did not the cover of the Youth's Companion, 
lead one to expect cold weather, snowy roads, fur- 
w^'apped human beings for the drive to Thanksgiv- 
ing dinner at the old home, or at hospitable abodes 
of uncles, aunts, or cousins! We remember or 
seem to remember many a Thanksgiving day when 
the ride northward, six or seven or ten miles, to 
Uncle Tom's or Uncle Jack's or Uncle William's 
country home, was decidedly of wintry character 
— steaming, restive horses, sleigh equipped with 
heavy robes, hot bricks, and freestones, snow- 
drifts across the fences, and brief runs behind the 
sleigh "to keep from freezing." Did the snow 
really fail with the years or did the boy merely 
grow up and imagination languish? There was 
certainly no very heavy snow on that Thanksgiv- 



NOVEMBER 137 

ing day when we walked across the open fields, six 
miles, to dinner at Aunt Eliza's, drove into town 
with the cousins and back again, and closed the 
day with a solitary walk homeward under clear 
moonlit skies, with the cottontails leaping beside 
the road and the farm dogs baying and barking 
loudly at the lone midnight traveler. A few years 
later, a drive across snowless Kansas prairies was 
a Thanksgiving treat ; again a few years, a similar 
ride across the low hills of the Jim River Valley 
was enjoyed, with the fur of the jack-rabbit the 
only white against the brown landscape. 

Two important items of Thanksgiving season, 
at least, we are sure are not dream-memories — 
apples and buffalo robes. One November day long- 
ago, a Grinnell firm sold seventy-eight barrels of 
apples. At that time a popular program for 
humble households was a barrel or two of bell- 
flowers for early consumption, greenings for solid 
midwinter comfort, and a barrel of russets to last 
as far into the spring as strong apple appetites 
would permit. The Christmas stocking usually 
contained a big bellflower or greening or both. 
What excursions, candle-lighted, into the cellar of 
a winter evening, for a plate of apples, to be pared, 
quartered or scraped ; reinforced perhaps by a big 
bowl of crisp popcorn ! What games with parings 
thrown over the shoulder, apples hung in the door- 
way for girlish teeth to claim ! With changing 



138 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

conditions of horticulture and community life, 
came later dynasties of willow twigs, ben da- 
vises, winesaps, northern spies and roman stems. 
Discussion of the relative merits of favorite kinds 
of winter apples made one stock subject for fire- 
side mnter conversation. 

In the late seventies and early eighties, buffalo 
robes were sold in Grinnell for from $5.00 to 
$15.00. It was a poor farmer who did not possess 
his buffalo robe and his buffalo coat, a poor ''liv- 
ery rig" sent out in cold weather without liberal 
supply of shaggy furs. No woven stuffs, no other 
furs can ever replace, for fancy, these old-time 
comforters. In those days the herds still lingered 
in the Missouri Valley, the widely scattered har- 
vest of bones had not been gathered from the Da- 
kota prairies, and schoolboys had not ceased to 
write essays on ''The American Bison." Black 
Hawk tells us he wore the buffalo robe after the 
death of his children, but for us let it remain in 
memory, now that its material form has departed, 
a thing of joy forever. ^^ 

Lawrence, Kansas, November 30, 1907. 
Today the campus pasturing closed, the cattle 
standing at the homeward bars in blissful ignor- 
ance of that fact. November is more distinctly 
and habitually an autumn month here than in cen- 

26 See Appendix, Note 21. 



NOVEMBER 139 

tral Iowa. The temperature usually goes to sev- 
enty degrees or higher during the month. Insect 
life is often flourishing — not only bugs, wasps, 
bees, spiders, crickets, gnats, grasshoppers, in- 
cluding the ''bird-grasshoppers,'^ but also butter- 
flies. On the thirteenth this year a fine grapta 
butterfly of an unidentified species was captured 
from a house wall and kept indoors several days, 
when it died, perhaps from lack of food. Prob- 
ably a few dragon-flies might be seen some years. 
Autumn foliage lingers sometimes well into No- 
vember, and bonfires this year have been burning 
throughout the month. Stevenson's little poem is 
applicable even to the Thanksgiving season here : 

AUTUMN FIRES 

In the other gardens, 

And all up the vale, 
From the autumn bonfires 

See the smoke trail ! 
Pleasant summer over 

And all the summer flowers, 
The red fire blazes, 

The gray smoke towers. 
Sing a song of seasons, 

Something bright in all ! 
Flowers in the summer, 

Fires in the fall ! 

Most flowers of real beauty pass A\ith October, 
but quite a list of blossoms, if one includes humble 



140 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

^^ weeds," can be made for November. This year 
the following- plants have been found in bloom 
sometime during the month : ^^ 

Aster, Dense-flowered. Aster multiflorus. 

Catnip. 

Clover, Red. Trifolium pratense. 

Clover, White. T. repens. (?) 

Dandelions. 

Knotweed. Polygonum ; species not determined. 

Shepherd's Purse. 

Soapwort. Saponaria officinalis. 

Sow-thistle, Spiny. Sonchus asper. 

Sweet Clover, White. 

Wild Peppergrass. Lepidium virginicum. 

Wood-sorrel, Yellow. Oxalis corniculata stric- 
ta. (?) 

Proverbial w^eather lore says that if flowers 
bloom in November the winter will be severe. We 
do not believe that will hold true of this locality. 

This is the season when local papers in many 
parts of the corn-belt relate the mighty deeds of 
the cornhuskers. In 1902, Iowa papers gave these 
records among others: Eighty-five bushels in 
nine and a half hours — by a woman ; and, wonder 
of wonders, two hundred and ten bushels in ten 
hours, by a man who claimed the Avorld champion- 
ship. So far the records this year do not seem 
very unusual. From Oklahoma, one hundred and 



See Appendix, Note 22, 



NOVEMBER 141 

forty l)iish('ls in ten hoiii's is reported; and one 
hundred and thirty bushels in the same time, as 
part of a total of twelve hundred busliels in ten 
days. Of the social aspects of cornhusking' in the 
old days, including the furiously fast labors of 
rival teams, one finds a spirited account in the once 
famous Circuit Elder. But the corn is not all 
gathered in November, nor even in December. One 
may see the high-boarded wagons among the yel- 
low stalks into January or later. The unreaped 
crop is not injured by frost or snow, but it has its 
enemies. ''Our Forefathers' Song" which has 
been traced as far back as 1630, says of the maize : 

And when it is come to full corn in the ear, 
It is often destroyed by raccoon and by deer. 

This is also a season of extensive prairie fires. 
This year destructive fires were reported from 
Minnesota about the middle of this month. Last 
year, a fire raged in Indian Territory over an area 
three miles wide and twenty miles long, destroy- 
ing hundreds of acres of standing corn. 

In his Autohiography^ Black Hawk thus speaks 
of the Sac rejoicing over the corn crop, though he 
does not specify any calendar period, and his ac- 
count of the supernatural gift of the maize, and of 
the ''crane dance" at the time of planting are con- 
siderably more extended : "When our corn is get- 
ting ripe, our young people watch with anxiety 



142 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

for the signal to pull roasting ears, as none dare 
touch them until the proper time. When the corn 
is fit for use another great ceremony takes place, 
with feasting and returning thanks to the Great 
Spirit for giving us corn." One wonders if the 
Eeservation Indians of today continue such a cus- 
tom. A year ago, the Grinnell Herald reported 
some of the "Tama Indians" passing through 
town for the autumnal squirrel hunt — a bit wild- 
er festivity than that described by the great chief, 
but perhaps less devout. 

A Jasper County paper reported last year the 
shooting of a golden eagle, perched in a large Cot- 
tonwood tree, the bird being about seven feet 
across the wings, and weighing eight pounds.^^ 
Not quite birds of prey, but no less interesting to 
some, are the red-breasted nuthatches appearing 
at Grinnell about the middle of this month. 

This year also, the Grinnell Herald reports the 
capture of two opossums on a farm in a wooded 
region southwest of town. The 'possum is fre- 
quently mentioned by the old travelers in this 
prairie section. It remains with us, while the bear, 
panther, deer, elk, and buffalo, with which it was 
once associated, have left for regions less haunted 
by humanity. Judging from hearsay 'possum lore 
and experience are richer in Missouri than in 
Iowa. Many Iowa boys never saw this quadru- 

28 See Appendix, Xote 23. 



NOVEMBER 143 

ped, unless in captivity, and their eliief knowledge 
of it is gained from the proverbial expression 
^'playing 'possum," and perliaps from the song: 

Possum meat am good to eat, 
Ca've him to de hea't.-^ 

The poor little creature seems to have had its 
share of abuse for a long period. Julia E. Rogers 
gives the last chapter of her recent Wild Animals 
Every Child should Know to the opossum, and 
these are the last words of her account: '' 'Play- 
ing 'possum' was a trick noticed by the colonists 
when they met the opossum for the first time. In 
the 'Perfect Description of Virginia,' published in 
1649, occurs this paragraph : 

" 'If a cat has nine lives, this creature surely 
has nineteen, for if you break every bone in their 
skin, and mash their skull, leaving them for dead, 
you may come an hour after and they will be gone 
quite away ; perhaps you may meet them creeping 
off.'" 

Dcs Moines, November 27, 1912. 

Yesterday in Lawrence, we heard the faint 
flight notes of bluebirds, and saw two flying quite 
high across the street. This month has had its 
usual quota of devastating prairie fires, including 
one in southwestern Kansas, over nearly a town- 
ship, another twenty miles long, and only two or 

29 See Ai)pendix, Note 24. 



144 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

three days ago others in Nebraska and South Da- 
kota. Heav}^ snows are reported from northern 
Michigan, but according to newspaper correspon- 
dence violets were in bloom a few days ago near 
Cottonwood Falls, Kansas. During part of the 
month, pear trees in Lawrence have been in mag- 
nificent coppery or wine-red foliage, the flicker has 
shouted his piercing cries, and the red-bellied 
woodpecker has been busily gleaning from the 
boles or branches of the street maples. 

It is somewhat colder here than two hundred 
miles south; but there are no signs of snow. The 
Des Moines Eiver is mainly open, though some 
small flat disks of ice appear here and there. The 
river banks between the principal streets have 
been much improved during the past few years, 
answering, surely, the expressed or unexpressed 
hopes of many citizens all over Iowa. Stately pub- 
lic buildings now adorn both sides of the river, 
and spacious parkings have been laid out, which in 
time will become attractive, dignified grounds. In 
too many of our western towns the shores of a 
considerable stream are degraded by a formless 
mixture of railway tracks, mills, hovels, and refuse 
heaps. 

The impressive Blashfield jjainting in the cap- 
itol is probably the most important mural decora- 
tion in this state. One could spend many hours in 
studying its details, and in forming abiding im- 



NOVEMBER 145 

pressions of the spirit of the composition as a 
whole. It has been criticized by the public, 1)Qy- 
haps unfairly, and defended by the artist, in re- 
spect to the manner of driving the ox team. One 
who has rambled over the prairie country may 
compare the prairie schooner with those still fre- 
quently seen, especially west of the Missouri; and 
attempt to relate the birds and flowers to those of 
reality. At first glance, the birds seem to be a 
kind of compromise between wild ducks and terns ; 
and the brick-red flowers, with inflorescence like 
that of the pink family — what name shall we give 
them? The buffalo skull is bluish gray, with the 
horns darker, and the cornfields show stalks ap- 
parently too low for their texture, and in darker 
shades than seem natural. But the composition 
must be taken as an allegorical rather than a real- 
istic picture, and it gives one a sense of the joy of 
pioneer adventure, a realization of our past his- 
tory; recalls those moments of personal experi- 
ence when the fertility and infinitude of the prai- 
ries haunted us like a spiritual presence. 

A few bright dandelion blossoms greet one from 
the lawn of the noble Historical Building, though 
most of the heads are in gray-white plumage. 
Within the building are treasures of so wide a 
range, of such complex details, that a lifetime 
would scarcely permit of intimate acquaintance 
with all. The writer has been among the books 



146 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

and art collections of the British Museum, but 
dares to confess that he always enters this famil- 
iar home building with a feeling of reverence. 
Some years ago in the little building along the 
Lexington Road where so many interesting relics 
of Concord were gathered, the curator had placed 
here and there on the walls printed placards read- 
ing: ^'Voices of the Past that Whisper." Here 
also, amid the energetic activities of today and 
large-minded plans for the future, the same voices 
reach us. 

Within a year or two a Harvard professor 
speaking at the University of California named 
Iowa as a state conspicuous for its lack of literary 
production. This seems to us one of those care- 
less statements the westerner so often hears from 
the easterner; but be that as it may, we have at 
least not been entirely negligent in collecting or 
reading the books others have written. Stephen 
Tabor, an Iowa citizen who died in 1883, is said to 
have left a private library of six thousand vol- 
umes. According to Gue, ^' every book had been 
read before being placed upon the shelves." In 
1848 the library of the state contained some sixteen 
hundred volumes, about one-third of them being 
law books. The state collections now contain some 
one hundred and forty thousand volumes. Within 
this building, also, are collections of books by Iowa 
authors indicating at least ''Literary Beginnings 







From a photograph by Mary Chamberlain 

Blair Hall on Grinnell Campus 



NOVEMBER 149 

in a "Western State.'' Here are many volumes in 
which early travelers or residents record their im- 
pressions of the prairie country; early maps, in 
which up to about 1867 the location of Indian 
tribes is an important matter. Here is Tanner's 
Vieiv of the Valley of the Mississippi, pubUshed in 
1832, in the introduction of which we read : ' ' iVnd 
soon the American who has not made the tour of 
the Valley of the Mississippi will be considered a 
man who has seen but little of his own country." 
After eighty years, we may recommend this senti- 
ment to some of our Yankee friends who consider 
Chicago as far west as one need go to see ''his own 
country," or whose "tour" of our Valley consists 
of a Pullman ride on a limited train from Chicago 
to Denver, Billings, or Moose Jaw. An original 
signature by "Juhen Dubuc," dating from 1806, 
recalls the large place the French people have had 
in this region; the portraits of Appanoose, Ma- 
haska, Keokuk, Tamah, Wapello, and Black Hawk 
offer studies of intense interest and limitless sug- 
gestion. From what a different world come these 
rare or even unique manuscripts and portraits of 
the Rossettis, of Tennyson, the Lyttons, and a hun- 
dred other English celebrities ! 

In the various museums of the building are a 
thousand memorials of the natural and social his- 
tory of the state — remains of mastodon and mam- 
moth, human bones from the Boone mound, pearls 



150 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

from the River, copperheads and rattlesnakes, the 
nest and eggs of the yellow-headed blackbird, won- 
derful fossil collections ; a real prairie schooner — 
the old ^ ' Canestoga wagon, ' ' with hind wheels five 
feet in diameter, and frame heavy in proportion 
— Filipino guns, a fence rail twelve feet long, the 
Amsterdam pulpit from which the good dominie 
Scholte inspired many a stalwart citizen to cross 
sea and land to Pella — whence later many a let- 
ter must have passed ' ' aan de geloovigen in Neder- 
land." 

But today perhaps nothing impressed us more 
than these words in a manuscript from ^'Octave 
Thanet" to Mr. Aldrich: ^^You are fond of Iowa. 
So am I. I have promised to write a book of 
stories (true stories) similar to the one by Stock- 
ton for New Jersey and Joel Chandler Harris for 
Georgia. Can you put me on the track of some 
good material!'^ It is twenty years since the 
writer first met Charles Aldrich — moving ner- 
vously about in his restricted quarters in the old 
library rooms at the capitol. Bringing him the en- 
thusiastic inquiries of a young man concerning 
Alexander Wilson, what courtesy and animation 
of response one found, what wide information, 
what zest for service ! On many a day in the years 
that followed we have seen his small, stooping 
form, gray head, keen, sensitive face by the office 
desk in the northwest room of this building ; or in 



NOVEMBER 151 

momonts of fatigue, in the last bravo year, resting 
on his conch ahnost among* the stacks. Of him and 
of the faithful woman helper in his last labors 
here, no living sign today. 

'^The form remains, the function never dies." 

GrinneU, November 28, 1912. 

Along the streets the chickadees are calling 
from maples and elms, and the nuthatch is work- 
ing steadily, with frequent grunts of self -approval. 
Around the borders of the park shepherd's purse 
is in bloom. Dandelion blossoms are fairly bright 
on the lawn in front of Blair Hall, and the pigeons 
coo comfortably about the cornices of that abode 
of science. 

The stimulating air this afternoon invited one to 
ramble into the country. In the old Reservoir, the 
ice is firm enough to hold a man for a yard or so 
from the shore, and at Arbor Lake a boy is sprawl- 
ing about on the ice, heedless of the loud calls from 
an anxious mother on the slope above. At the 
south end of the Lake a clump of small willows 
makes an almost brilliant yello^^ish patch against 
the general grayish-brown of the landscape. The 
Lake is a recent triumph of landscape gardening, 
but the little stream flowing from it, wherein ice 
and water now mingle, is the same we followed 
many years ago. The contour of the hills, the 
clustered trees, the osage hedges are mainly as of 



152 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

old: Down the little valley the wind is fairly 
strong, stirring the broken, trampled cornstalks 
and leaves to sharp, insistent, rustling sounds. 
On the eastward slope, a half mile away, a sports- 
man with gun and dog stalks rapidly by the feed- 
ing horses and cattle — a silent figure, looming 
and picturesque. A small bird suddenly rises 
from the ground with a tenuous alarm note and 
wings skyward. Perhaps it is a horned lark. From 
the bed of the stream a lone wader springs up as if 
reluctant to be disturbed in its wintry solitude, 
and flies rapidly down stream, with a sharp clat- 
tering cry — to rise again for longer flight when 
again the intruder approaches. 

On the hill farm which was our goal the house- 
wife was in the yard, apologetic for her dress. 
She had been picking corn this Thanksgiving day, 
and her husband was found storing a wagonload, 
fresh from the field, in the old-fashioned board- 
latticed crib. (At least one high school principal, 
home for the holiday, is out on the fraternal farm, 
helping with the husking.) All about the red cyl- 
inders of the silos, conspicuous through the bare 
trees and hedges, are new monuments of the en- 
during rule of the King. Passing into the corn- 
fields, after greeting the farmer, one sees an ear 
dropped from the wagon, shining like gold. Under 
the standing corn, the dry, brown, matted masses 
of silk are spread along the earth. 



NOVEMBER 153 

Uow tliiu soeiu tlie old woodlands westward, 
compared with their dark, almost impenetrable 
masses in boyish days ! My farmer host said he 
had recently cut down the old cottonwood in which 
the tree sparrow lingered that November after- 
noon so long ago. Trees of My Boyhood! The 
^^^[llow where the bees buzzed about fragrant cat- 
kins in early May, where the swing hung, where 
the flag floated; the choke-cherry, whose red-black 
fruit was gladly abandoned to the eager robins — 
the ' ' bird-tree ' ' ; the hard maple in the corner of 
the yard, firm, compact, clear in outline, noble in 
autumnal coloring; the two great cottonwoods, 
falling when they fell, with angry crash nearly 
across the broadest street in town ! Trees, also, 
of more adventurous if not more romantic days 
of other youths in other regions! This cotton- 
wood, for happy example, of Parkman's camp 
along Laramie Creek: ''Our daily routine soon 
became as regular as that of a well-ordered house- 
hold. The weather-beaten old tree was in the cen- 
tre; our rifles generally rested against its vast 
trunk, and our saddles were flung on the ground 
around it; its distorted roots were so twisted as to 
form one or two convenient arm-chairs where we 
could sit in the shade and read or smoke ; but meal- 
times became, on the whole, the most interesting 
hours of the day, and a bountiful provision was 
made for them. An antelope or a deer usually 



154 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

swung from a bough, and haunches were sus- 
pended against the trunk. That camp is daguer- 
reotyped on my memory: the old tree, the wliite 
tent, with Shaw sleeping in the shadow of it, and 
ReynalPs miserable lodge close by the bank of the 
stream. ' ' ^° 

The ^'Big Rock," too, remembered by a thou- 
sand travelers on foot, or in wagon or carriage, as 
they came down the long hill, turned south and 
*^ struck the road" between the counties, is said to 
be blasted and removed. We will loaf no more on 
its granite surface, in June sunshine, comrades of 
mine. No more will we brush the snow from the 
gray-whit e-black mosaic and stamp our chilly feet 
till they are warm for the homeward stretch. But 
the oranges are still l}dng caught in the thorny 
branches of the osage ; the tree sparrows still ren- 
der tinkling music from the brush-heap in the 
farmyard; the black furrows of newly ploughed 
fields are again waiting for the snows of Decem- 
ber and the seed of a late March day. 

Laivrence, Kansas, November 30, 1913. 
We have had chiefly warm weather throughout 
the month, with the temperature passing seventy 
degrees a number of days, and on Thanksgiving 
and since, cloudiness, rain, mist, or fog. Within 
the last ten days or so, many insects have been 

30 Oregon Trail, Chapter X. 



NOVEMBER 155 

active — the bird-grasshopper in strong fhght, 
crickets singing in the grass, ''their cheerful sum- 
mer cry, ' ' as White of Selborne calls it ; a swarm 
of mosquitoes, and a small orange butterfly on a 
golden dandelion blossom. Nearly every day for 
a week the cardinal has sung, often in strains al- 
most as free and varied as in spring. A Carolina 
wren, a really trim, dainty bird, was feeding on the 
trunk of a small tree, not four yards from the 
club-house window, Thanksgiving afternoon, and 
we heard wild geese passing over soon after our 
Thanksgiving dinner. 

A correspondent at Grinnell writes that ''our 
neighborhood has been enlivened since the day be- 
fore Thanksgiving by the presence of a pair of 
long-eared owls, roosting usually in the big, crook- 
ed box-elder west of Mr. Erskine's house. Are 
they rare here?'^ "Whether rare or not for others, 
for you and me such little novelties of observa- 
tion cheer the passing days, and enrich the mem- 
ory for 5^ears to come. How applicable to the 
whole field of nature for many of us, is the spirit 
of White's sincere, simple statement: "It is now 
more than forty years that I have paid some atten- 
tion to the ornithology of this district, without be- 
ing able to exhaust the subject: new occurrences 
still arise as long as any inquiries are kept 
alive." ^^ 



31 Natural History of Selborne, Letter XLIX. 



156 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Many of us ^nll die without having seen the 
wonders of nature in foreign lands, but — 

The cardinal sings in this cherry tree, 

The barred wren feeds on the bole, 
Though a thousand birds unknown to me 

Are busy 'twixt pole and pole. 

Year after year your eyes have sought 

The creatures of wood and sward, 
But the strange, weird owls today has brought 

To roost in the neighbor's yard. 

Whether we wander far afield. 

Or w^ait by our place of birth. 
We are gleaners aye from the bounteous yield 

Of the wonders of our earth. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

/. NOTES FOR SEPTEMBER 

1. An October record for robin song is given in the 
text, but the A\Titer has not known the robin as a fluent 
songster in September. Slight but real songs were heard 
at Lawrence, Kansas, on October 2, 5, and 6, 1914. 

2. Greene gives both the papaw and persimmon as 
''not common." Gray's Manual locates the papaw in 
northeastern Iowa, and the persimmon in southeastern 
Iowa. In Lawrence, Kansas, the negro boys are some- 
times thromng sticks and stones to bring down persim- 
mons from the park trees as early as the twentieth of 
September, though often the fruit is not at its best till 
much later. As is well kno^^^l, its sweetness waits for a 
sharp frost. The persimmon trees are among the first 
to show a tinge of autumnal yellow — sometimes before 
the end of September. This note appeared in a Memphis 
paper in the fall of 1913: ''There is no such thing as 
persimmon ^vmQ. Once there ^vas persimmon beer. It 
is about as palatable as rainwater flavored vvdth dried 
apples. ' ' 

3. One year the sumac began to color on the Uni- 
versity campus at Lawrence by the twenty-third of 
September. One year on September fourteenth scarlet 

(159) 



160 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

maple branches, with tall cattails, served as dining-room 
decorations in a Hood River hotel. Two days later, 
from our Pullman window we saw lines of bright colored 
shrubbery running up the ravines in the bleak hills of 
southern Idaho, and the next day looked out upon snow- 
covered hills in southern Wyoming. 

4. Anderson says the western meadowlark never sings 
in Iowa after the first of September, and that the eastern 
remains into November — some occasionally throughout 
the \^dnter. There is poetic propriety in the fact that 
the autumnal song, that of the ''melancholy days," is 
the thin-voiced, pathetic melody of the eastern variety. 

5. A note for the campus at Lawrence records golden- 
rod bloom on November seventeenth, in 1910. The fol- 
lowing Thanksgiving Day, the writer picked a bouquet 
of bright, fresh, violet-tinted asters at Excelsior Springs, 
Missouri. 

6. Toward the end of September, 1910, a friend re- 
ported seeing the monarch host at Lawrence, Kansas, 
and about the same time the Kansas City Star contained 
an article on the migration. 

7. The cicadas can be heard at Lawrence, some years, 
well into October, and occasionally into November. 

8. I have found Grindelia in bloom at Leavenworth 
in mid-September, at Topeka, on the Washburn College 
campus, October fifth, and at Manhattan on October 
twentieth. Miss Cooper's Rural Hours contains an in- 
teresting passage of some half dozen pages on the Latin 
and English names of our American flowers. She 



APPENDIX 



161 



writes partly in indignation at tlic absui'dity and ugli- 
ness of much of the nomenclature. 

9. With very few exceptions, the trees mentioned by 
Bradford, Brackenridge, Darby, Mrs. Ellett, James, 
Pike, and Woods, as belonging to Iowa or its neighbor- 
hood, are given in Greene's Plants of Iowa. The follow- 
ing is a partial list of species found both in these early 
writers and in Greene. (The index to English names in 
Greene is far from satisfactory.) 



Ash (species?) 




Locust (l)lack Locust?) 


Ash, Prickly 




Locust, Honey 


Asp (Aspen; species?) 


Mulberry 


Birch (species?) 




Papaw 


Box Elder 




Pecan 


Butternut 




Persimmon 


Cedar, Red 




Maple, Red 


Cherry, Wild 




Oak, Black (Yellow Oak) 


Cottonwood 




'' Black Jack 


Crab Apple 




'' Bur 


Dogwood 




'' Laurel (Shingle Oak) 


Elm, American ( 


White 


'' Pin 


Elm) 




'' Post 


Elm, Mucilaginous 


(Slip- 


' ' Swamp 


pery Elm) 




'' White 


Hackbeny 




Pine (species?) 


Hickory, Common 


(spe- 


Poplar 


cies?) 




Plum, Wild 


Hickory, Shellbark 




Redbud 


Hornbeam 




Sassafras 


Tronwood 




Walnut, lilack 


Linden 







162 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

10. A few September flowers found in central and 
eastern Iowa, 1906-1909. (In popular names this list 
follows Greene; in scientific names, Gray's Manual, ed. 
of 1908. While the writer has analyzed all specimens 
and taken care Avith classification, it cannot be guaran- 
teed that all the species are correctly given. Many speci- 
mens were first detennined from the sixth ed. of Gray's 
Manual . Comparison of this edition, that of 1908, and 
Greene reveals the usual lack of fixity in both popular 
and scientific names which vexes the amateur botanist, 
year after year, from Atlantic to Pacific.) 
Arrowhead. Sagittaria. 
Aster, New England. Aster novae-angliae. Charles 

City and eastward; south of Waterloo; Grinnell. 
Aster, Panicled. A. paniculatus. Charles City; Clear 

Lake. 
Bellflower, Tall. Campanula americana. McGregor. 
Bergamot, Wild. Monarda fistulosa. 
Black-eyed Susan. Rudbeckia hirta. 
Bindweed, Hedge. Convolvulus sepium. 
Blazing Star, Large. Liatris scariosa. 
Boneset. Eupatorium perfoliatum. 
Boneset, False, Kuhnia eupatorioides. Charles City. 
Boneset, Tall. Eupatorium altissimum. McGregor. 
Bugle-w^eed, Purple. Lycopus virginicus. Charles City. 
Bur-marigold, Nodding. Bidens cernua. Charles City. 
Butter-and-Eggs. Linaria vulgaris. 
Cardinal-flower. Lobelia cardinalis. Along upper Wap- 

sipinicon. 
Catnip. Nepeta cataria. 
Chickweed, Common. Stellaria media. 



APPENDIX 163 

Cliickwced, Large Mouse-ear. Cerastiuni vulgatuin. 

Cinquefoil, Rough. Potentilla monspeliensis. Ionia ; 
Charles City. 

Clammy Weed. Poiauisia graveolens. Clear Lake. 

Coneflower, Gray-headed. Lepachys pinnata. Mason 
City. 

Coneflower, Sweet. Rudbeckia snbtomentosa. Charles 
City; Grinnell. 

Coneflower, Tall. Rudbeckia laciniata. Mason City; 
Charles City. 

Coneflower, Thin-leaved. Rudbeckia triloba. Charles 
City; near Des Moines. 

Cucumber, One-seeded Bur. Sicyos angulatus. Du- 
buque. 

Cudweed, Lobed. Artemesia ludoviciana. 

Culver 's Root. Veronica virginica. McGregor. 

Cup-plant. Silphium perfoliatum. 

Evening Primrose, Common. Oenothera biennis. 

False Dragonhead. Physostegia virginiana. Mason 
City; Charles City; Waterloo. 

Flat Top. Vernonia noveboraeensis. Grinnell. ^ 

Four-o'clock, Wild. Oxybaphus. Clear Lake. 

Galinsoga. Galinsoga pai^iflora. Dubuque. 

Gentian, Prairie. Gentiana puberula. Mason City. 

Gentian, Yellowish. G. flavida. Charles City. 

I have found G. crinita and G. affinis early in Sep- 
tember in Minnesota. A friend has sent G. procera 
from southern Wisconsin late in September. 

Gerardia, Slender. Gerardia tenuifolia. Charles City; 
Grinnell. 

I have found G. grandiflora in splendid bloom at 



164 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, on the first day of Septem- 
ber. 

Goldenrod, Bushiy. Solidago graminifolia. Cliarles 
City. 

Goldenrod, Elm-leaved. S. ulmifolia. Charles City. 

Goldenrod, Field. S. nemoralis. 

Goldenrod, Missouri. S. missouriensis. Charles City. 

Goldenrod, Sho\^y. S. speeiosa. McGregor. 

Goldenrod, Stiff. S. rigida. East of Charles City; 
Mason City. 

Goldenrod, Zigzag. S. latifolia. Charles City. 

Goldenrods. Greene gives twenty numbers. The field 
and Riddell's seem among the more common species. 
Among the more abundant on the campus at Lawrence, 
apparently, are the stiff, Canada, Riddell's and S. 
petiolaris. One analysis pointed to S. tenuifolia, for a 
somewhat strange-looking species, but Gray's Manual 
does not carry this species so far west. 

Ground-cherry, Low Hairy. Physalis pubescens. 

Ground-cherry, Virginia. P. virginiana. Waterloo. 

Gum-plant, Broad-leaved. Grindelia squarrosa. Prai- 
rie du Chien. 

Harebell. Campanula rotundifolia. McGregor. 

Hawkweed, Canada. Hieracium canadense. Charles 
City. 

Heal-all. Prunella vulgaris. 

Hedge Nettle, Rough. Stachys tenuifolia. Charles City. 

Indian Tobacco. Lobelia inflata. McGregor. 

Ironweed, Western. Vernonia fasciculata. 

Joe-pye Weed. Eupatorium purpureum. 

Leafcup, Small-flowered. Polymnia canadensis. Mc- 
Gregor. 



APPENDIX 165 

l.ohclia. Great. L()l)elia siphilitica. IMcGregor; Grin- 
nell. 

Lobelia, Pale Spiked. L. spicata. Observed in Minne- 
sota. 

Loosestrife, Fringed. Steironenia eiliatnm. Charles 
City. 

Loosestrife, Wing-angled. Lythrnm alatuni. Grinnell. 

Lousewort, Swamp. Pedicularis lanceolata. Charles 
City ; Grinnell. 

I\Iallow, Romid-leaved. IMalva rotundifolia. 

Marigold, Fetid. Dyssodia papposa. Across River from 
Muscatine. 

Mayweed. Anthemis cotula. 

Monkey-flower. Mimulus ringens. Charles City. 

Morning-glory, Ivy-leaved. Ipomoea hederacea. Wat- 
erloo. 

Morning-glory, Purple. I. purpurea. 

IMotherwort. Leonurus cardiaea. 

Mullein, Great. Verbascum thapsus. 

Nightshade, Black. Solanum nigrum. 

Nightshade, Smaller Enchanter's. Circaea alpina. ]\[c- 
Gregor. 

Partridge Pea. Cassia chamaecrista. 

Pennyroyal, American. Hedeoma pulegioides. 

Persicaria, Pale. Polygonum lapathifolium. Clear Lake. 

Persicaria, Swamp. P. muhlenbergii. Clear Lake. 

Rattlesnake-root. Prenanthes alba. Charles City: ^Ic- 
Gregor. 

Skullcap, Mad-dog. Scutellaria lateriflora. Charles City. 

Sanicle, White. Eupatorium urticaefolium. Charles 
City; Dubuque; Des Moines. Also at Fort Snelling, 



166 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

and Devil's Lake. One of the most conspicuous 
campus flowers at Lawrence throughout October. 

Sneeze weed. Helenium autumnal e. 

Soapwort. Saponaria officinalis. 

Spanish Needles. Bidens frondosa. 

Speedwell. Veronica. 

Spurge, Flowering. Euphorbia corollata. Charles City. 

Spurge, Upright. E. preslii. 

Stonecrop, Ditch. Penthorum sedoides. Clear Lake. 

Sunflower, Pale-leaved Wood. Helianthus strumosus. 

Sunflower, Saw-tooth. H. grosseserratus. 

Sunflower, Stiff. H. scaberrimus. Mason City. 

Sunflower, Stiff-haired. H. hirsutus. 

Sunflower, Showy. H. laetiflorus. 

Sunflowers. For the state, Greene gives 18 numbers. 

SwTet-clover, White. ^Melilotus alba. 

Tickseed-Sunflower, Long-bracted. Bidens involucrata. 
Fort Des Moines. 

Touch-me-not, Pale. Impatiens pallida. Clear Lake. 

Touch-me-not, Spotted. I. biflora. Charles City. 

Velvet Leaf. Abutilon theophrasti. 

The writer prefers the old name, ' ' Indian Mallow. ' ' 

Vervain, Blue. Verbena hastata. 

Vervain, White. V. urticaefolia. 

Wild Balsam Apple. Echinocystis lobata. 

Willowherd, Northern. Epilobium adenocaulon. Du- 
buque ; Des Moines. 

Wood-sorrel, Upright Yellow. Oxalis stricta. 

Woundwort. Stachys palustris. Waterloo. 

Yarrow, Common. Achillea millefolium. 



APPENDIX 167 

11. Selections from the Diaries of William Savage for 
September. 

1856. 18. Killed a Turkey, took it to Salem and 
sold it for 30 cents. 

1858. 17. Kill first Turkey of this season. 

1859. 18. Painted bird D. B. shot, resembling a 
moorhen, its name unknown. 

1859. 19. Picked elderberries. 

1860. 6. Very hot. 

1862. 6. Dug in an Indian grave, found nothing 
but bones. Shot 1 Turkey and 1 fox squirrel. 

1862. 28. Kill 1 f. squir. 2 greys, 1 hawk, 1 Turkey. 
1868. 11. Commenced Cutting Corn. 

1863. 18. Sandhill cranes and wild geese Hy over. 

1863. 20. Picked a basket of grapes by creek. 

1861. 19. First Frost. 

1864. 20. Finish my corn, set 10 shocks, 91 in all, 
mostly round ones Avith 3 forks in them for braces ; then 
cut my buckwheat and set it up; to creek and carry 
water, strip some cane and dug some sweet potatoes. 

1864. 21. Shot 1 g. hog; caught skunk in trap in 
field. 

1887. 30. Shot 1 rab. and Rover caught 1 ; then I 
went to C. Bottom to find some hops; got a few. Shot 
2 f. s. and 2 g. s. and smoke 1 rab. and trap 4 chewinks. 

1907. 6. Paint some on Northern Butcherbird. 

//. NOTES FOR OCTOBER 

12. There is a note on the ''field-crickets" in Letter 
XL VI of the Natural History of Selhorne. White speaks 
of "their cheerful summer cry," but adds: "They are 



168 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

so shy and cautious that it is no easy matter to get a sight 
of them; for, feeling a person's footsteps as he advances, 
they stop short in the midst of their song, and retire 
backward nimbly into their burrows, where they lurk 
till all suspicion of danger is over." 

13. The "wood violet" of popular language was per- 
haps Viola papilionacea ( ?) ; the ''bird's-foot" very 
probably Viola pedatifida, or less likely Viola pedata 
(?). But ''by any other name," etc. 

14. Gray's Manual, edition of 1908, gives six species 
of the Staff Tree family, and the habitat of ''waxwork" 
as from IMaine to Manitoba and southward. The same 
work enumerates 65 species of thorn, most of them easter- 
ly ones, and many of very restricted habitat. It is inter- 
esting to note that they fruit generally in October, 
though some are recorded as fruiting in August or Sep- 
tember, and a few in November. Greene gives eight 
species for Iowa. (Genus Crataegus.) 

15. A synoptical arrangement of Miss Cooper's 
notes in Rural Hours, for October coloring of trees. (See 
pp. 170-171.) 

Without clear dates. Miss Cooper also gives these items 
of coloration : Locusts, seldom more than a tolerable 
yellow; pears, pale yellow or russet, sometimes just 
touched with red or purple ; sycamores, same note as for 
locusts ; weeping willows, only pale yellow. 

16. At the time of its appearance this article caused 
considerable discussion. Below is a list of the chief ani- 
mals mentioned, with Professor Osborn's statement, in 
brief, as to the probable time of their extinction in the 



APPENDIX 169 

state, or tlu'ir present status therein. The present writ- 
er has added a few data in parenthesis. 

Badger. ''Few if any left." Reported from the cen- 
tral parts of Iowa in the early eighties. 

Beaver. Linn County and Tama County records of 
1890, and seen near Missouri Valley in 1891 (?). 

(Beaver slides and men trapping beaver were seen 
along the Solomon River in west-central Kansas in 
1887.) 

Buffalo. Disappeared between 1850 and 1870. 

(In 1883 or 1884 two or three buffaloes were re- 
ported seen in Faulk County, [South] Dakota.) 

Deer, Virginia. "As early as the middle sixties it was 
practically unknown in the central and eastern part of 
the State, at least in those portions Avhich were sought 
for settlement. The species probably lingered some 
time longer through the central and western portion, 
but records of the occurrence are too scanty and in- 
definite for us to name any date for its final extinc- 
tion.", etc. 

(The writer dimly remembers hearing in boyhood 
that the Iowa deer lingered last in the northeast sec- 
tion of the state.) 

Elk. No dates given. 

Lynx. "The species, if present in any locality, must be 
practically extinct throughout the state." 

Mink. "May survive in specially favored localities, but 
for the state at large it must be counted as pi'actical- 
ly gone. ' ' 

(So-called "minks" were often denounced as ene- 
mies of the chicken-vard in tlie writer's bovliood. Once 



170 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



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172 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

the report came that a neighbor's wife had ahnost 
stepped on a mink prowling about her back porch. 
Possibly these "minks" were really creatures of 
another species.) 

Otter. Found in Linn County during the seventies. 

Panther. ' ' Probably some time between the early settle- 
ments and 1860 must have seen the departure of these 
animals. ' ' 

Turkey, Wild. Professor Osborn speaks of this species 
as extinct in the state, but Mr. Aldrich adds a note 
stating that a fine specimen was shot in Monroe County 
in 1904. 

Wild Cat. ''May be found at rare intervals." 

Wolf, Prairie. ' ' They doubtless occur still in the rough- 
est sections." 

(This seems a very mild statement. One often hears 
that they are holding their own or even on the in- 
crease in some regions. The local papers every spring 
report many bounties paid in some counties. While 
picnicking along Eock Creek in Jasper County, about 
1903, we heard the howling of a coyote, and were told 
it was frequently heard in that vicinity.) 

Wolf, Timber. ''Yet to be found in small numbers in 
specially favored places." 

(Local papers report timber wolves seen or shot 
from time to time, but always mention such occasions 
as rare ones.) 
17. Thirty Towa herbs found blooming in October in 

northeastern Kansas: mainly at Lawrence, Topeka, or 

Manhattan. The figures indicate the last day of the 



APPENDIX 173 

inoiitli bloom lias been noted, ('onii)are also the Xovciii- 
ber list, pages 140 and 177. 

1. Aster, Sky-blue. Aster aziireus. 4. 

2. Aster, Aromatic. A. oblongifolius. 4. 
8. Black-eyed Susans. Rudbeckia hirta. 

4. Boneset, Tall. Eupatorium altissimiim. 9. 

5. Coneflower, Thin-leaved. Rudbeckia triloba. 

6. Cress, Spreading Yellow. Radicula sinuata. 20. 

7. Culver's Root. Veronica virginica. 4. 

8. Eclipta. Eclipta alba. 12. 

9. Evening Primrose, Common. Oenothera biennis. 
Bloom and buds. 12. 

10. Figwort. Scrophularia. When analyzed only 
one species given in Gray. 

11. Fleabane, Daisy. Erigeron ramosus. 4. 

12. Fleabane, Larger Daisy. E. annuus. 5. One 
fleabane not analyzed, but likely one of these two species, 
found in bloom October 22. May probably be found in 
November. 

13. Gaura, Small-flowered. Gaura parviflora. 18. 
Its near relative, Stenosiphon linifolius, a very attrac- 
tive late autumn prairie flower, found in bloom on the 
20th. 

14. Gentian, Blue. Gentiana puberula, probably. Re- 
ported at their prime on the 12th one year at Lawrence. 

15. Gum-plant, Broad-leaved. Grindelia squarrosa. 
20. 

16. Ironweed. Vernonia. 

17. Heal-all. Prunella vulgaris. 

18. Jimson-weed. Datura stramonium. 12. 

19. Mayweed. Anthemis cotula. 31. 



174 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

20. Nightshade, Black. Solanum nigrum. 13. 

21. Poppy ]\Iallow, Purple. Callirhoe involucrata. 
20. 

22. Ruellia, Hairy. Ruellia ciliosa. 6. 

23. Sage, Lance-leaved. Salvia lanceolata. 18. 

24. Sage, Pitcher's. Salvia azurea. 17. 

25. Sandbur. Solanum rostratum. 24. 

26. Spurge, White-margined. Euphorbia marginata. 
20. 

27. Sunflower, Stiff-haired. Helianthus hirsutus. 

28. Tickseed, Tall. Coreopsis tripteris. 22. 

29. Trailing Wild Rose. Strophostyles helvola. 4. 

30. Umbrella-wort, Hairy ( ?). Oxybaphus hirsutus 
(?), possibly albidus. 11. 

18. Notes from William Savage's Diaries for October. 

1855. (William Savage arrived in Iowa, reaching 
Salem by stage from Burlington. His Iowa journals be- 
gin this same month.) 

1857. 9. Days very warm and nights very cool. 

Caught a coon in steel trap in my corn- 
Went to see the shooting match. 
Went to mill. 

House raising at neighbor's. 
Mowed fence corners; then came first 

Got white oak bark for John. 
Watch treed a skunk up a jack oak by 
house ; got up and struck a light, but could not see what 
it was. 



1857. 


18. 


field. 




1857. 


24. 


1857. 


26. 


1857. 


29, 


1859. 


17. 


snow-squall. 


1859. 


28. 


1860. 


9. 



APPENDIX 175 

1860. 12. Kill 2 rabbits and 1 Possoin that Watch 
treed. Shot 1 P chick on corn shock, the first this fall. 

1861. 9. Finished stripping cane, and top'd some. 
1861. 27. Gathered a good mess of hickoiy nuts. 

1861. 29. Shot a mink near the cut off. 

1862. 13. Went to C. Bottom and got a great heap 
of Butternuts. 

1863. 13. Walter and I gathered a sack of black 
walnuts and piled up some butternuts. 

1887. 1. Fished some above the Gill Riffle. I caught 
2 three pound catfish and some small ones. 

1887. 4. Split some poles and paint some on sugar 
haw branch under blue grosbeak and Prothonotary 
warbler. 

1887. 16. Portray a kildeer plover that Foster H. 
shot and brought down for me. 

1907. Pick up a basketful of black walnuts by my 
branch. 

19. From Caroline A. Soule's novel, The Pet of the 
Settlement. 

''The prairies were brilliant ^^dth the nodding crowns 
and the golden rod and the waving spires of the Avild 
sun -flower; the low thickets that hedge them were royal 
with glossy-leaved hazle bushes and crimson-plumed 
sumachs — masses of purple asters clustering lovingly 
about their roots ; the forests were gorgeous with scarlet 
maples, yellow hickories, dark green oaks and silvery- 
leaved cottonwoods, while do\m on the river-bottoms 
and all along the banks of the little creeks, the brown 
vines of the wild grape were drooping heavily with their 
thousand clusters of dead-ripe fnut . . . long ere they 



176 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

were looking for it, a crisping frost had tinted the long 
grass of the prairies with a sunlike hue, and crowned as 
Avith rubies the old maple that shadowed their cabin. 

^'But so glorious was that autumn, that none of them 
mourned for the lost summer. Like a dream of beauty 
it lay on their hearts; day after day of the calmest, lov- 
liest weather coming to delight them. The golden air 
was fragrant with balmy winds; the sky was splendid, a 
thousand flitting tints of blue and amber chasing over 
its zenith, while pale, purplish mists hung about its hor- 
izon; the woodland grew each day more gorgeous in its 
coloring; the river sang more softly, while the prairies 
were more magnificent than ever, their long grass roll- 
ing and swelling like the waves of an ocean, while the 
flowers that lingered were kingly in their hues, giving 
here a rich amethystine glory to the landscape, and 
there clothing it with a star-like radiance." 

(The text states that the events connected with the 
scenes described above occurred fifteen years before the 
novel was published, which was in 1860.) 

III. NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 

20. In the edition of 1908 this extension is made: 
"and rarely throughout autumn and winter." Rich, 
abundant blossoms are sometimes seen at Lawrence in 
December and even in January. Dandelions were re- 
ported in bloom in Grinnell at the end of November, 
1907. 

21. It was probably in the early eighties that a one- 
wagon menagerie of Nebraska wild animals was drawn 
into Grinnell by a team of buffaloes. In September, 



APPENDIX 177 

1906, the writer picked ii]) a fairly Avell preserved buf- 
falo skull on the i)i'airie near Swift Current, Saskatche- 
wan. In Fel)ruary, 1907, a Kansas City paper reported 
local sales of some half dozen buffalo robes, at a price of 
about $500.00 each. 

22. In later years the following additions have been 
made to the list : 

Aster. Another unidentified species. 
Burdock. 

Begg-ar-tieks, Swamp. Bidens connata. 
Bidens aristosa. 

Bur-marigold, Nodding. Bidens cernua. 
Chickweed. Stellaria media (?). 
Goldenrod. Unrecorded species. 
Mallow, Common. Malva rotundifolia. 
Sanicle, White. Eupatorium urticaefolium. 
Violets. Not observed but doubtless in bloom. Reported 
from Cottonwood Falls, one year. 

23. This is a proper seasonal item. Anderson says 
the species does not breed in Iowa, that it is a rather rare 
but fairly regular visitant, and while sometimes seen in 
winter is most commonly observed in March, April, and 
October. One often sees newspaper reports of eagles 
taken in November, in this region. At the very end of 
October, 1908, a young golden eagle was reported cap- 
tured at Clay Center, Kansas, which was sent as a pres- 
ent to President Taft. The earliest individual eagle 
known to some prairie boys was pro1)ably ''Old Abe," 
the famous mascot of a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil 
War. In November, 1913, a newspaper item refers to a 



178 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

''huge gray eagle" shot near Warrensburg, Missouri; 
another item to a "large American eagle, measuring 17 
feet from tip to tip," killed near Fairbury, Nebraska. 
''It carried a large pig in its talons," adds the report. 
This last paper should employ an ornithologist, or at 
least a competent proofreader. 

2.4. In Missouri, verily, 'possum hunts and 'possum 
suppers are still a matter of annual enthusiasm. On 
November 12, 1913, an all-night hunt took place not 
very far from Kansas City. At Excelsior Springs, on 
Thanksgiving Day, 1910, one of the attendants at the 
sulpho-saline pavilions was heard to remark: "I am 
going home with the Doctor for a 'possum supper. ' ' A 
LaAvrence paper a year or so ago quoted a negro as say- 
ing 'possums were specially good, and also reported that 
some one took eight 'possums on one hunt. A discussion 
in the correspondence column of the Kansas City Star in 
November, 1913, included an elaborate account of "how 
they cooked the ' 'possum ' in Virginia. ' ' An issue of the 
Memphis Commercial Appeal, the same year, published 
this somewhat iconoclastic version of ' ' 'possum meat : ' ' 
"The South has long been cursed with stories of things 
said to exist here or to be peculiarly Southern that are 
the mere fictions of the exuberant imaginations of profes- 
sional Southerners south of the line and professional 
Southerners who have never been farther south than 
Washington. Nobody now eats possum, and nobody now 
eats possum and sweet potatoes. Once the negroes ate 
possum once in their lives, but no negro ever made a 
second assault on a dish of possum. A man who could 



APPENDIX 179 

enjoy possum should have a copper-riveted sloiuacli, and 
a taste for pure fat with a strong odor." 

25. Notes f]'OHi William Savage's Diaries for No- 
vember. 

1857. 23. 1 watched Well's cornfield and shot a 
Spike Buck, wounding him in the ham. He went into 
Cap's field and lay all night. Next morning I tracked 
him up and found him just north of Cap's house. He 
then jumped up and I shot him again as he rolled over 
the fence. He ran a piece and lay down, got up again, 
and ran to the creek and crossed it at the island. I 
then found him on the other side, shot him again, and 
then Watch caught him, we killed him and dragged him 
home. 

Trapped 7 quails and shot 1 Turkey Watch 

Went butternut ting. 

First snow. 

Thunder and rain ; sowed timothy seed. 
First snow. 

Dr. killed 5 ducks and 2 quails ; I shot -L 

Weave some (weaving don't go right some 

Shot 1 f. squir. and 3 ducks; then grub. 
Grub; (raining). 
Grub. 

A. m., grub; p. m., hunt; shot 1 f. squir. 
Hunt for sign; made 5 pens for mink 
traps; shot 1 g. s. 



1860. 


9. 


treed. 




1861. 


3. 


1861. 


17. 


1861. 


19. 


1862. 


2. 


1862. 


15. 


ducks. 




1863. 


4. 


way.) 




1863. 


18. 


1863. 


19. 


1863. 


20. 


1863. 


21. 


1863. 


22. 



180 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

1875. 10. Hunt in morn, and kill 1 gob. Turkey 17 
pounds. 

1875. 16. Snow. I killed a turkey and he got away 
from me on Summer Creek ; and shot 1 q. and 1 dove. 

1878. 27. Hunt some in C. Bottom; shot at and 
wounded a turkey, it flew over the creek at Clay Bluff 
I too tired to follow it. 

1887. 16. Chop and split up a cherry tree west of 
little meadow (it being a sprout from a tree I chopped 
down when I lived in the old house. Made 14 rails out 
of said tree.) Chop some stakes and stake some fence. 

1887. 19. Wind blowing very hard, has blown our 
cornshocks do^Mi, about 80 of them scattered all over field. 
I look around field, found some rails blown off fence. I 
cut 2 linn trees down by road fence, then John and I 
tried to haul the scattered fodder; hauled 1 load, the 
wind blew so hard we quit. 

1906. 20. To traps and brought all 7 traps in. 
SNOW % in. deep, the first ; it fell yesterday eve. 

IV. HISTORICAL DATA 

1804. Floyd's Journal written. 

1805. Pike's Expedition up the Mississippi. 

1834. Black Hawk^s AiU Ohio graph y. L . . .^s Journ- 
al of Marches of Dragoons (written.) 

1836. Edwin James came to Iowa. Lea's Notes on 
Wisconsin Territory. 

1839. Kneeland's Letters from Saluhria. 

1841. Newhall's Sketches of Iowa. 

1843. Audubon in Iowa. 



APPENDIX 181 

18-48. Parry's Sijsfcmaiic Cafalogue of Flanis of Wis- 
consin and Minnesota. 

1852. Owen's Geology of Iowa. 

1858. Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Miss- 
issippi Valley. The loiva Farmer and Horticulturist. 

1855. William Savage arrived in Iowa. His journals 
began, running to 1908. 

1867. Davenport Academy of Science founded. 

1873. Parry's Early Exploration and Settlement of 
the Mississippi Valley. White's Physical Geography of 
Iowa. Agassiz visited Iowa. (This visit resulted in the 
removal of Wachsmuth and his crinoid collections to 
Massachusetts. ) 

1876. Bessey's Geography of Iowa. J. C. Arthur's 
Contributions to the Flo7^a of Iowa. 

1885. Abbie Gardner Sharp's History of the Spirit 
Lake Massacre. 

1886. Allie B. Busby's Among the Musquakies. 

1887. Starr's Bibliography of Iowa Antiquities. 
Williams and Keyes' Check-list of Iowa Birds. 

1891. Calvin's Prehistoric Iowa. 

1899. Barr's Monograph on the Mississippi River. 
Garland's Boy Life on the Prairie. 

1904. Hornaday's Amencan Natural History. Mar- 
garet C. Walker's Our Birds and their Nestlings. 

1906. Lazell's Some A\itumn Bays in Iowa. 

1907. Anderson's Birds of Iowa. Greene's Plants of 
Iowa. 

1908. Bender's Geography of Iowa. 

1911. Miner's The Iowa Indians. Wallace's Educa- 
tion of the Iowa Farm Boy. 

1913. Seerley's The Country School. 



18i> AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 

V. CHIEF ARTICLES AND BOOKS TO WHICH 
REFERENCE IS MADE 

Aldrich, Charles: The Old Prairie Slough. Annals 
of Iowa, vol. V, p. 27. 

Anderson, Rudolph Martin: The Birds of Iowa. 
Davenport, 1907. 

Black Hawk's Autobiography. 1834. New ed., with 
Introduction and Notes by James D. Rishell, Rock Is- 
land, 1912. 

Brackenridge, Henry Marie : Journal of a Voyage up 
the River Missouri. Second ed., 1816. (In Thwaites.) 

Bradford, Wm. J. A. : Notes on the Northwest, or 
Valley of the Upper Mississippi. New York and Lon- 
don, 1846. 

Cooper, Susan Fenimore: Rural Hours. New York, 
1850. New ed., Boston and New York, 1887. 

Darby, William: The Emigrant's Guide to Western 
and Southwestern States and Territories. New York, 
1818. 

Ellett, Mrs. : Summer Rambles in the West. New 
York, 1853. 

Famham, Eliza W. : Life in Prairie Land. New 
York, 1846. 

Flagg, Edmund: The Far M^est. New York, 1838. 
(In Thwaites.) 

Garland, Hamlin: Boy Life on the Prairie. New 
York and London, 1899. 

Gray, Asa, and others: Manual of Botany. Editions 
of 1889 and 1908. 

Greene, Wesley: Plants of loiva. Des Moines, 1907. 



APPENDIX 183 

James, Edwin: Account of an KspidUion . . . 
under the Command of Major Stepln n II. Lou(/. I*liil- 
adelphia, 1823. (In Thwaites.) 

Osborn, Herbert: Recent Extinct and Vanishing Wild 
Animals of Iowa. Annals of Iowa, vol. vi, page 561. 

Peyton, John L. : Over the Alleghanies and Across 
the Prairies. London, 1869. (Records for 1848.) 

Pike, Major Z. M. : Account of Expeditions to the 
Sources of the Mississippi, etc. Philadelphia, 1810. New 
ed. by Elliott Coues, New^ York, 1895. 

Pittman, Capt. Philip : Present State of the European 
Settlements on the Mississippi. London, 1770. New ed., 
edited by F. H. Ilodder, Cleveland, 1906. 

R. B.: View of the Valley of the Mississippi. Phil- 
adelphia, 1832. (Published by H. S. Tanner, and known 
as ''Tanner's View of the Mississippi".) 

Richman, Irving B. : John Brown Among the Quak- 
ers, and Other Sketches. Des Moines, 1894. Revised 

ed., 1897. 

Rogers, Julia Ellen:: MHld Animals Every Vhild 
should Know. New York, 1913. 

Soule, Caroline A.: The Pet of the Settlement. A 
Story of Prairie-Land. Boston, 1860. 

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, Editor: Early Western Trav- 
els. Cleveland, 1904-1907. 

Woods, John: Two Years' Residence in . . • the 
Illinois Country. London, 1822. (In Thwaites.) 



INDEX 



Albia to New Sharon, 97 
Aldrieh, Cliarles, 11, 111, 150 
Anderson, Birds of Iowa, 160, 

177 
Apple, Wild Crab, 34, 35, 76 
Apples, uinter, 137 
Arrowhead, 48, 53, 69 
Arsenal, Rock Island, 81 
Asters, 39, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 97, 

108, 160 
Autumn in Iowa, 3, 175 

Banking of houses, 113 

Beetles, 24, 42, 82, 83, 87, 135 

Bellflower, Tall, 59 

Bergamot, Wild, 52 

Beulah, 57 

Bindweed, 54 

Birds bathing, 25, 27 

Birds, first acquaintance with, 
106 

Birds heard at night, 104 

Bittersweet, 76, 93, 94, 168 

Black-eyed Susans, 58 

Black Hawk, 69, 70, 149 ; Auto- 
biography, 62, 65, 138, 141 

Blashfield painting, in the Cap- 
itol, 144 

Blazing Star, 48, 52, 69 

Bluebird, 26, 27, 40, 79, 84, 86, 
104, 143 



Bob-white, 95 

Bohemians i 

Boneset, 47 

Boone, 149 

Bridges, 23, 71, 98, 134 

Brooks, 75 

Buffalo, 91, 138, 145, 169, 176 

Buffalo robes, 138, 177 

Burlington, 41, 99, 174 

Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night, 

127 
Butterflies, 53, 60, 83, 112, 135, 

139, 155 
Butterflies, Monarch, migration 

of, 60, 160 



Cape Cod, 34, 58, 112 

Cardinal, 155 

Cardinal-flower, 58 

Carlyle, Hero as Prophet quot- 
ed, 41 

Catbird, 47, 105, 106 

Cattails, 54, 69 

Cedar Falls, 25, 86, 121 

Charles City, 36, 57, '58 

Chicago, 41, 101, 149 

Chickadee, 40, 82, 119, liil, 151 

Childhood memories, 28, 31, 38, 
43, 45, 47, 99, 101, 106, 110, 
m, 113, 133, 136, 153 



186 



INDEX 



Church, Catholic, at Dubuque, 

66 
Church, country, in Iowa, 21 
Church harvest service, 25 
Church, Little Brown, in the 

Vale, 21 
Cicadas, 40, 42, 54, 61, 160 
Clear Lake, 57, 60, 101 
Clover, Eed, 85, 86, 102 
Clover, Sweet, 43 
Clover, White, 53, 85 
Coalfield, 99 
Colfax, 39 
Color of autumn flowers, 37, 48, 

57, 176 
Color of autumn foliage, 39, 97, 

103, 168, 170, 175 
Color of autumn landscape, 118, 

151 
Coneflowers, 48, 53, 57, 163 
Cooper, Susan Fenimore, Rural 

Hours, 32, 39, 103, 124, 160, 

168, 170 
Corn, essay on, by Edith Thom- 
as, 32 
Corn-Belt, The, 32, 140 
Corn fields, 25, 31, 32, 34, 39, 

53, 91, 145, 152, 180 
Corn harvest, 98, 108, 118, 140, 

152, 167, 180 
County, Black Hawk, 25, 86, 121 
Boone, 149 
Buena Vista, 63 
Cerro Gordo, 37, 42, 57, 

58, 60, 63, 101 
Cherokee, 21 
Chickasaw, 58 



Clayton, 55, 70 
Des Moines, 41 
Dubuque, 63, 113 
Floyd, 36, 57, 58 
Hardin, 132 
Harrison, 169 
Henry, 167, 174, 179 
Jasper, 31, 36, 39, 52, 

82, 142, 172 
Johnson, 131 
Linn, 28, 169, 172 
Mahaska, 97, 99 
Marion, 150 
Marshall, 38, 134 
Monroe, 99, 172 
Muscatine, 69 
Palo Alto, 63 
Polk, 39, 45, 52, 100, 

143 
Poweshiek, 31, 34, 45, 
47, 75, 82, 93, 104, 
108, 113, 117, 123, 
134, 142, 151, 155, 
176 
Scott, 80, 113, 142 
Tama, 28, 52, 132, 169 
Wapello, 99 
Winneshiek, 55 
Woodbury, 34, 88 

Cowbird, 72 

CVanes, 24, 167 

Crayfish, 111 

Creeks, 56, 75, 133, 152 

Creeper, Brown, 121 

Crickets, 25, 27, 53, 83, 102, 108, 
118, 167 

Crows, 33, 98, 118 



INDEX 



187 



Dandelions, 53, i;U. 145, 151, 

176 
Davenport, 80, 113 
Davenport Academy of Science, 

82 
Decorah, 55 
Deer, 59, 169, 179 
De Quincey, quoted, 63 
Des Moines, 39, 45, 52, 100, 

143 
Dickcissel, 36, 43 
Dock, 48 
Dubuque, 63, 113 
Dubuque, Julien, 65, 149 
Dutch in Iowa, The, 150 
Dvorak, Anton, 56 

Eagles, 142, 177 
Eddyville, 99 
Edmundson, William, 99 
Eggleston, The Circuit Bider, 

141 
England, Autumn in, 93, 125, 



128 



English rivers, 64 

Evelyn's Diary, quoted, 125 

Evening Primrose, Common, 43 



Fair at Grinnell, 51 

False Dragonhead, 44, 58, 163 

Farmers and Farming, 25, 33, 

35, 41, 51, 76, 98, 138, 152 
Farnham, Eliza W., Life in 

Prairie Land, 35, 36 
Fergusson, Robert, Farmer's 

Ingle, 128 
Fishing, 100, 125, 175 



Flagg, Kdiimnd, The Far West, 

35, 37, 39, 48 
Flicker, 25, 26, 54, 104, 144 
Floods and Freshets, 23, 38, 72, 

91, 134 
Flowers, color of Autumn, 37, 

48, 57, 176 
Flowers, November list, 140, 177 
i^'lowers, October list, 173 
Flowers, September list, 162 
Foliage in Autumn, 27, 39, 86, 

97, 99, 102, 103, 105, 112, 139, 

144, 159, 168, 170, 175 
Fort Armstrong, 81 
Fort Des Moines, 53, 101 
French in Iowa, 42, 63, 65, 149 
French names in Iowa, 63 
Ftogs, 82 

Galinsoga, 63 

Garland, Hamlin, Boy Life on 

the Prairie, 11 
Geese, Wild. 27, 112, 124, 155, 

167 
Gentians, 37, 48, 58, 163, 173 
Gerardia, 48, 163 
Goldenrod, 24, 27, 39, 47, 48, 

53, 56, 57, 69, 79, 82, 85, 97, 

160, 164 
Goldfinch, 26, 47, 54, 83, 120 
Grackles, 36, 41, 87, 119, 120 
Grains, small, 69, 101, 125, 167 
Grapes, Wild, 24, 35, 76, 167, 

175 
Greene, Wesley, Plants of Iowa, 

56, 58, 59, 62, 70, 159, 161, 

162, 164, 166, 168 



188 



INDEX 



Grinnell, 31, U, 38, 45, 47, 75, 

82, 93, 99, 104, 108, 110, 113, 
117, 123, 134, 142, 151, 155, 
176 

Gum-plant, Broad-leaved, 61, 

160 
Gypsies, 51, 52 

Hai^lowe'ex, 96 

Harebell, 58 

Harvest church service, 25 

Hawks, 79, 98, 118 

Hazel and hazel-nutting, 36, 93, 

95, 175 
Plistorical Department of Iowa, 

11, 145 
Hummingbird, Ruby-throated, 47 
Hussey, Tacitus, September 

quoted, 19 ; October quoted, 

73 

ICARIA, 42 

Hlinois, 41, 48, 71, 81, 101, 122, 

149 
Indians, 28, 29, 42, 52, 56, 62, 

65, 69, 70, 91, 92, 123, 138, 

141, 142, 149, 167 
Indian Mallow, 48, 166 
Indian ''Reservation," Tama 

County, 28, 52, 142 
Indian Summer, 124, 134 
Insects, 24, 25, 27, 40, 42, 51, 

52, 53, 54, 60, 61, 71, 79, 82, 

83, 86, 87, 102, 108, 112, 118, 
134, 135, 136, 139, 154 

Iowa City, 131 
Iowa Falls, 132 
Iron weed, 36, 48, 52 



Jay, Blue, 26, 87, 121 

Kansas, 103, 108, 112, 123, 135*, 
137, 138, 143, 154, 159, 160, 
164, 166, 169, 172, 177 

Katydids, 27, 52, 71 

Keokuk, Chief, 70, 149 

Killdeer, 84 

Kingfisher, Belted, 25, 39 

Kinglets, 104, 125 

Landscape and Topography, 
28, 33, 34, 47, 51, 52, 53, 59, 
65, 80, 82, 91, 97, 117, 118 

Lark, Horned, 79, 84, 102, 123, 
152 

Lewis, Meriwether, note on the 
gum-plant, 62 

Libraries in Iowa, 146 

Lillie, Florence E., on butter- 
flies, 60 

Literary production in Iowa, 146 

Lobelias, 48, 53, 58, 165 

Longfellow, Evangeline quoted, 
107 

Loosestrife, 48 

Lousewort, 48, 53 

Lumber industry at Davenport, 
80 

Macy, Jesse, Civil Government 

in Iowa, 131 
Maps of Iowa, early, 132 
Marigold, Fetid, 71 
Marion, near, 28 
Marshalltown, 38 
Marshalltown, Mason City to, 

37 



INDEX 



189 



Mason City, 37, 42, o8 
Massachusetts, 34, 58. Ill' 
Mayweed, 48, 173 
McGregor, 55, 70 
Meadowlavk, 27, 47, 79, 86, 98, 

160 
Meeker, Ezra, 99 
Mice, field, 110 
Milkweeds, 48, 97 
Mink, 169, 175, 179 
Minnesota., 26, 41, 60, 122, 141, 

163, 165 
Mints, 48, 58 

Missouri, 113, 142, 160, 178 
IVIissouri A^alley, 169 
Mockingbird, 105, 107 
Moles, 108, 110 
Monkeyflower, 36 
Monuments in Iowa, 45, 46 
Mullein, 97 
Muscatine, 69 
Muskrats', 110 

Names of flowers, 58, 59, 160, 
162 

Names of towns, 33, 55, 63 

Nebraska, 62, 91, 144, 176, 178 

Newhall, Sletches of loiva, 
quoted, 3 

New Hampton, 58 

New Sharon, Albia to, 97 

New York State, 32, 39, 103, 
124, 160, 168, 170 

Nighthawk, 41, 51 

Nightshade, Smaller Enchant- 
er's, 59 

North Dakota, 40, 91 



X()\cml)cr, general character of, 

121. 122, 123, 124, 125, 136, 

13S, 154 
November list of flowers, 140, 

177 
Nuthatch, Red-breasted, 142 
Nuthatch, White-breasted, 86, 

104, 121, 151 
Nutting, 35, 36, 93, 175, 179 

October, general character of, 

75, 93, 95, 96 
October list of flowers, 173 
Opposum, 142, 175, 178 
Osage hedges, 76, 110, 151, 154 
Osborn, Herbert, Recent Extinct 

and Vanishing Wild Animals 

of Iowa, 109, 168 
Oskaloosa, 99 
Our Forefathers' Song, quoted, 

141 
Owl, Long-eared, 155 
Ox team, the, 99, 145 

Papaw, 35, 159 

Parkman, Oregon Trail quoted, 

153 
Parks in Iowa cities, 36, 40, 41, 

44, 45 
Partridge Pea, 69 
Perfect Description of Virginia, 

quoted, 143 
Pearls, river, 70, 149 
Pella, 150 

Persimmons. 35, 159 
Peyton, Over the AUeghanies 

and Across the Prairies, 122 



190 



INDEX 



Phoebe, 72 

Pilot Rock, Cherokee County, 21 

Plantain, 43 

Ploughing, fall, 33, 69, 99, 125, 

154 
Plums, Wild, 24, 35 
Pocket Gopher, 108, 110 
Pope, Alexander, Pastorals, 93 
Prairie Chickens, 35, 76 
Prairie du Chien, 61, 62, 65 
Prairie fires, 141, 143 
Prairie schooner, 145, 150 
Pumpkins, 25, 32, 39, 86, 98 

Quadrupeds, 109, 142, 167, 169, 

174 
Quimby, founding of, 22 

Railroad, history of an Iowa, 

37 
Railroad journeys, 28, 37, 52, 

55, 69, 97 
Railroad right-of-way, 38, 39, 

41, 52, 98, 99 
Railroad surveying, 22, 23, 26 
Rattlesnakes, 82 
Richman, Irving B.. Mascoutin 

quoted, 69 
River, Big Sioux, 34 

Cedar, 36, 58, 134 
Des Moines, 100, 144 
Iowa, 132, 134 
Little Sioux, 23 
Mississippi, 27, 61, 63, 

64, 69, 71, 80, 88 
Missouri, 34, 88 
Raccoon, 100 



Shell Rock, 44, 58 
Skunk, 39 
Turkey, 56 
Upper Iowa, 56 
Wapsipinicon, 58 
Rivers, British, 64 
Rivers, Iowa, 46, 56, 72, 133, 

134, 144 
Robin, 27, 40, 47, 82, 84, 86. 

120, 153, 159 
Rogers, Julia E., Wild Animals 
Every Child slioiild Know 
quoted, 143 

Salem, 167, 174, 179 
Sanicle, White. 48, 53 
Saskatchewan, 58, 100, 177 
Savage, William, 11; diaries 

quoted, 167, 174, 179 
Science and sentiment, 106 
September, general character of, 

26, 40 
September list of flowers, 162 
Shepherd's Purse. 85, 151 
Shrikes, 110, 120 
Silos, 152 
Sioux City, 88 
Sleighing, 124, 136 
Slouf/h, The Old Prairie, Charles 

Aldrich, 11, 111 
Sloughs, 38, 47, 52, 108, 111, 

119 
Smartweed, 48, 53 
Sneezeweed, 48, 58 
Snow, 75, 96, 112, 122, 123, 124, 

125, 136, 179, 180 
Snowbirds, 84, 86, 108, 120 



INDEIX 



191 



Soule, Caroline A., Pet of the 

Settlement, L'4 ; (juoted, 175 
South Dakota, 24, 91, 118, 123, 

136, 137, 138, 144, 169 
Spanish names in Iowa, 63 
Sparrow, Chipping, 26 
Sparrow, English, 25, 27 
Sparrow, Harris, 106 
Sparrow, Tree, 118, 154 
Sparrow, White-throated, 79, 84^ 

104 
Spenser, Edmund, Fairy Queen, 

133; Shepherd's Calendar, 93, 

125 
Spillville 56 
Springs, 41 
Spurge, 54 

Squirrels, 95, 109, 142, 167 
Starr, Frederick, 82 
State, across the, 28, 33 
State Capitol, at Des Moines, 

53, 144, 150; at Iowa C^ty, 

131 
State Historical Building, 145 
State history, 63, 65, 71, 114. 

131, 149 
State library, 146 
State literature, 3, 11, 19, 56, 

62, 69, 109, 115, 131, 143, 

146, 150, 160, 175 
State patriotism, 46, 64, 148 
Stevenson, E. L., Autumn Fires 

quoted, 139 
Storms, 23, 95, 96, 122, 123, 124, 

126, 180 
Sumac, 39, 98, 159, 175 
Sunflowers, 39, 44, 47, 48, 53. 



54, ()9. 97, 166 
Swift, Chimney, 41 

Tabor. Stephen, 146 
Tanner's new of the Mississij)- 

pi Valley, quoted, 149 
' ' Thanet, Octave, ' ' letter to 

Charles Aldrich quoted, 149 
Thanksgiving, 136, 139, 152, 155 
Thomas, Edith, Mondamin, 32 
Thompson, Maurice, interest in 

mockingbird, 108 
Thomson, James, The Seasons, 

127 
Thorn Trees, 93, 168 
Thoroughwort, 47 
Tickseed-sunflowers, 54 
Trappist monastery near Du- 
buque, 166 
"Trees of my Boyhood," 153 
Trees of north-eastern Iowa, 60, 

70 
Trees of south-eastern Iowa, 71, 

159 
Trees of the prairie in early 

Avriters, 161 
Trout, Brook, 60 
Trumpet Weed, 48 
Turkey, Wild, 167, 172, 179. 180 
Turtles, 108, 111, 128 

Vervain. 39, 48, 52, 54, 97 
Violets. 79, 85, 95, 115. 144, 

168, 177 
Vireo, Eed-eyed, 36 
Vireo, Warbling, 42, 47 

Warblers, 104 



192 



INDEX 



Watermelons, 24, 69, 95 
Weather, November, 117, 121, 

122, 123, 125, 136, 138, 154, 

179 
Weather, October, 75, 80, 87, 

93, 95, 100, 112 
Weather, Septemoer, 22, 26, 37, 

40, 53, 112, 167 
White, Gilbert, Natural History 

of Selhorne, 59, 111, 128, 

155, 167 
Wisconsin, 61, 163, 164, 166, 177 



Wolves, 70, 172 
Woodpecker, Hairy, 120 
Woodpecker, Eed-bellied, 144 
Woodpecker, Bed-headed, 41 
Woods, John, Tico Years' Besi- 

clence in the Illinois Country, 

35, 39, 48, 161 
Wood-sorrel, Yellow, 54, 85, 102 
Wright, Hattie Leonard, To a 

November Violet quoted, 115 

Yarrow, 48 



